Transcriber's Note: Greek words may not display properly--in that case, try another version. Transliterations of Greek words can be found in theascii and html files. Words italicized in the original are surrounded by_underscores_. Characters superscripted in the original are inclosed in{} brackets. 

ESSAYS TOWARDSA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

 _Rosalind:_ I pray you, what is't o'clock?

 _Orlando:_ You should ask me, what time o' day; there's no clock in the forest. 

 _As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 2. _

ESSAYS TOWARDS ATHEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

BY

ALEXANDER PHILIPF. R. S. E

[Illustration]

LONDONGEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS LIMITEDNEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1915

ἡ γὰρ ἀχρώματός τε καὶ ἀσχημάτιστος καὶ ἀναφὴς οὐσίαὄντως οὖσα ψυχῆς κυβερνήτη μονῳ θεατῂ νῶ, ρεπὶ ἧν τὸ τῆςἀληθοῦς ἐπιστήμης γένος, τοῦτον ἔχει τὸν τόπον. --PHÆDRUS. 

PREFACE

Two years ago, in the preface to another essay, the present writerventured to affirm that "Civilisation moves rather towards a chaos thantowards a cosmos. " But he could not foretell that the _descensus Averni_would be so alarmingly rapid. 

When we find Science, which has done so much and promised so much forthe happiness of mankind, devoting so large a proportion of itsresources to the destruction of human life, we are prone to askdespairingly--Is this the end? If not; how are we to discover and assurefor stricken Humanity the vision and the possession of a Better Land?

Not certainly by the ostentatious building of peace-palaces nor even bythe actual accomplishment of successful war. Only by the discovery oftrue first principles of Thought and Action can Humanity be redeemed. Undeterred by the confused tumult of to-day we must still seek a trueunderstanding of what knowledge is--what are its powers and what alsoare its limitations. Nor may we forget that other principle oflife--with which it is so quaintly contrasted in Lord Bacon'stranslation of the Pauline aphorism--_Knowledge bloweth up, Charitybuildeth up. _

_January 1915. _

CONTENTS

 PAGEI

TIME AND PERIODICITY 11

II

THE ORIGIN OF PHYSICAL CONCEPTS 17

III

THE TWO TYPICAL THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 36

IV

THE DOCTRINE OF ENERGY 81

ESSAYS TOWARDS ATHEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

I

TIME AND PERIODICITY

We can measure Time in one way only--by counting repeated motions. Apartfrom the operation of the physical Law of Periodicity we should have nonatural measures of Time. If that statement be true it follows thatapart from the operation of this law we could not attain to anyknowledge of Time. [11:1] Perhaps this latter proposition may not atfirst be readily granted. Few, probably, would hesitate to admit that ina condition in which our experience was a complete blank we should beunable to acquire any knowledge of Time; but it may not be quite soevident that in a condition in which experience consisted of amultifarious _but never repeated_ succession of impressions theKnowledge of Time would be equally awanting. [12:1] Yet so it is. Theoperation of the Law of Periodicity is necessary to the measurement ofTime. It is by means, and only by means, of periodic pulsative movementsthat we ever do or can measure Time. Now, apart from some sort ofmeasurement Time would be unknowable. A time which was neither long norshort would be meaningless. The idea of unquantified Time cannot beconceived or apprehended. Time to be known must be measured. 

Periodicity, therefore, is essential to our Knowledge of Time. ButNature amply supplies us with this necessary instrument. The Law ofPeriodicity prevails widely throughout Nature. It absolutely dominatesLife. 

The centre of animal vitality is to be found in the beating heart andbreathing lungs. Pulsation qualifies not merely the nutrient life butthe musculo-motor activity as well. Eating, Walking, --all our mostelementary movements are pulsatory. We wake and sleep, we grow weary andrest. We are born and we die, we are young and grow old. All animal lifeis determined by this Law. 

Periodicity--generally at a longer interval of pulsation--equallyaffects the vegetal forms of life. The plant is sown, grows, flowers, and fades. 

Periodicity is to us less obvious in the inanimate world of molecularchanges; yet it is in operation even there. But it is more especially inthe natural motions of those so-called material masses which constituteour physical environment that Periodicity most eminently prevails. Indeed it was by astronomers that the operation of this Law was firstdefinitely recognised and recorded. Periodicity is the scientific namefor the Harmony of the Spheres. 

The two periodic motions which most essentially affect and concern ushuman beings are necessarily the two periodic motions of the globe whichwe inhabit--its rotation upon its axis which gives us the alternation ofDay and Night, and its revolution round the Sun which gives us the yearwith its Seasons. To the former of these, animal life seems mostdirectly related; to the latter, the life of the vegetal orders. It isevident that the forms of animal life on the globe are necessarilydetermined by the periodic law of the Earth's diurnal rotation. Thisaccounts for the alternations of waking and sleeping, working andresting, and so forth. In like manner the more inert vitality of thevegetable kingdom is determined by the periodic law of the Earth'sannual revolution. When fanciful speculators seek to imagine what kindof living beings might be encountered on the other planets of oursystem, they usually make calculations as to the force of gravity on thesurface of these planets and conjure up from such data the possible sizeof the inhabitants, their relative strength and agility of movement, etc. So far so good. But the first question we should ask, beforeproceeding to our speculative synthesis, should rather be the length ofthe planet's diurnal rotation and annual revolution periods. Certainplanets, such as Mars and Venus, have rotation periods not verydifferent from those of our own Earth. [14:1] Other things being equal, therefore, a certain similarity of animal life must be supposed possibleon these planets. On the other hand, the marked difference in theirrevolution period would lead us to expect a very wide divergence betweentheir lower forms of life, if any such there be, and our own terrestrialvegetation. The shorter the annual period the more would the vegetalapproximate to the animal, and _vice versa_. It would, however, befoolish to waste more time over a speculation so remote. 

But these two facts remain unshaken:--(1) That our measurements andwhole science of Time depend absolutely on the operation throughoutNature of the Law of Periodicity, and (2) that the periodicities whichaffect and determine animal and vegetal life upon our Earth are theperiodic movements of rotation and revolution of that Earth itself. 

Now it is to the curvilinear motions of the heavenly bodies that we mustascribe our subjection to the periodic law. If these heavenly bodiesmoved for ever in straight lines, as they would do if unacted on bynatural forces, the periodic rhythm of Nature would disappear. 

It is to the fact that all Nature is under the constraint due to theconstant silent operation of physical Force that we owe, therefore, thelaw which determines the most essential features of vitality. Thepulsations in which life consists and by which it is sustained areattributable to the constraint and limitation which we recognise as theeffect of the operation of Natural Force. It is to this same cause thatwe ascribe the resistance of cohering masses in virtue of whichsensation arises and by which our experience is punctuated. It is bymeans of these obstructions to free activity that our experience isdenoted, and by reference to these that it is cognised. Indeed, Activityitself as we know it depends upon and presupposes the existence ofthese cohering masses. 

Thus the operation of Natural Force and the constraint and limitationwhich are thereby imposed upon our activity appear at once to determinethe conditions of life and to furnish the fundamental implements ofKnowledge. 

We cannot overleap the barriers by which Life is constrained. These, whilst, on the one hand they seem to _create the environment_ whichsustains Life, on the other hand seem to impose upon it the limitationsunder which it inevitably fails and dies. We cannot even in imaginationconceive, either as reality or as fancy, the illimitable puissance of aLife perfectly free and unrestrained. Yet the assurance that PerfectLove could overcome the bonds of Materiality and Death encourages inmankind the Hope of an existence beyond the impenetrable veil ofphysical limitation. And this at any rate may be admitted, namely, thatthat dynamic condition in which materiality arises is also thecondition-precedent of Tridimensionality, of Force, of Time, and ofMutation. But we cannot thus account for the _elan vital_ itself. 

FOOTNOTES:

[11:1] Plato in the dialogue _Timæus_ tells us that Time was born withthe Heavens, and that Sun, Moon, and Planets were created in order thatTime might be. 

[12:1] This might be contrasted with the statement of M. Bergson whotells us (_Evolution créatrice_, p. 11): "Plus nous approfondirons lanature du temps plus nous comprendrons que durée signifie invention, création de formes, elaboration continue de l'absolument nouveau. "

[14:1] Recently, we believe, astronomers have favoured the view that theday of Venus is equal in length to her year. 

II

THE ORIGIN OF PHYSICAL CONCEPTS

"_Penser c'est sentir_, " said Condillac. "It is evident, " said BishopBerkeley, "to one who takes a survey of the _objects_ of Human Knowledgethat they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses or else suchas are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of theMind, or lastly ideas formed by help of memory and imagination eithercombining, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceivedin the foresaid ways. " J. S. Mill tells us, "The points, lines, circles, and squares which one has in his mind are, I apprehend, simply copies ofpoints, lines, circles, and squares which he has known in hisexperience, " and again, "The character of necessity ascribed to thetruths of Mathematics and even, with some reservations to be hereaftermade, the peculiar certainty attributed to them is an illusion. " "In thecase of the definitions of Geometry there exist no real things exactlyconformable to the definitions. " Again Taine, "_Les images sont lesexactes reproductions de la sensation. _" Again Diderot, "_Pour imagineril faut colorer un fond et détacher de ce fait des points en leursupposant une couleur differente de celle du fond. Restituez à cespoints la même couleur qu'au fond, --à l'instant ils se confondent aveclui et la figure disparait_, " etc. Again, Dr. Ernest Mach, Vienna, remarks, "We are aware of but one species of elements of Consciousness:sensations. " "In our perceptions of Space we are dependent onsensations. " Dr. Mach repeatedly refers to "space-sensations, " andindeed affirms that all sensation is spatial in character. [18:1]

According to the view of Knowledge of which we have extracted examplesabove, the ideas of the mind are originally furnished to it bysensation, from which therefore are derived, not necessarily all ourThoughts, but all the materials of Discourse, all that constitutes theessence of Knowledge. 

Our purpose at the moment is to show that this view is altogether false, and our counter proposition is, that it is from our Activity that wederive our fundamental conceptions of the external world; thatsensations only mark the interruptions in the dynamic Activity in whichwe as potent beings partake, and that they serve therefore to denote anddistinguish our Experience, but do not constitute its essence. 

We do not propose now to devote any time to the work of showing thatsensations from their very nature could never become the instruments ofKnowledge. We propose rather to turn to the principal ideas of theexternal world which are the common equipment of the Mind in order toascertain whether in point of fact they are derived from Sensation. 

Of course to some extent the answer depends on what we mean bySensation. If by that term we intend our whole Experience of theexternal, then of course it necessarily follows--or, at least, weadmit--that our Knowledge of the external must be thence derived. Butsuch a use of the term is loose, misleading, and infrequent. The onlysafe course is to confine the term Sensation to the immediate data ofthe five senses--touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste, with probablythe addition of muscular and other internal feelings. It is in thissense that the word is usually employed, and has been employed by theSensationalist School themselves. 

Now we might perhaps begin by taking the idea of Time as a conceptconstantly employed in Discourse, but of which it would be absurd tosuggest that it is supplied to us by Sensation. It might, however, beurged in reply that the idea of Time is not derived from the externalworld at all, but is furnished to us directly by the operations of theMind, and that therefore its intellectual origin need not involve anyexception to the general rule that the materials of our Knowledge of theworld are furnished by Sensation alone. Without, therefore, enteringupon any discussion of the interesting question as to what is the realnature of Time, we shall pass to the idea of Space. 

Mach, the writer whom we have already quoted, in his essay on _Space andGeometry_ speaks constantly and freely of sensations of Space, and asthere can be no denial of the fact that Space is a constituent of theexternal world, it would seem to follow that those who hold Sensation tobe the only source of our Knowledge must be obliged to affirm thepossibility of sensations of Space. Mach indeed claims to distinguishphysiological Space, geometrical Space, visual Space, tactual Space asall different and yet apparently harmoniously blended in our Experience. He is, however, sadly wanting in clearness of statement. He never tellsus when and where exactly we do have a sensation of Space. In truth henever gets behind the postulate of an all-enveloping tridimensionalworld; so that he throughout assumes Space as a datum, and his inquiryis an effort to rediscover Space where he has already placed it. 

Let us, however, consider for a moment what can be meant by a sensationof Space. Does it not look very like a contradiction in terms? PureSpace, if it means anything, means absolute material emptiness andvacuity. How, then, by any possibility can it give rise to a sensation?What sensory organ can it be conceived as affecting? How and in what waycan it be felt?

The truth is the idea of Space is essentially negative. It representsabsence of physical obstruction of every kind. No doubt, we may describeit positively as a possibility of free movement, and such a descriptionis at once true and important. Yet even _it_ involves a negative. Theterm "free" is in reality, though not in form, a negative term and means"unconstrained. " And the reason why such a term is necessarily negativeis to be found in the fact that a state of dynamic constraint is theessential condition under which we enter upon our organic existence. Freedom is a negation of the Actual. Absolute freedom is a conditiononly theoretically possible, and is essentially the negation of thestate of restraint in which our life is maintained. 

But the definition last quoted is nevertheless valuable because itclearly shows what really is the origin of the idea of Space. It provesthat the idea of Space is a representation of one condition of ourActivity. It is because the primary work of Thought is to represent theforms of our dynamic Activity that we find the idea of Space sonecessary and fundamental. 

But it will perhaps be argued that our ordinary sensations carry withthem a spatial meaning and implication, and that indirectly, therefore, our sensations _do_ supply us with the idea of Space. It will readily beagreed that if this is so of any sensations it is pre-eminently true ofthe sensations of vision and touch. Indeed, it will perhaps not bedisputed that the ordinary vident man derives from the sensations ofvision his most common spatial conceptions. We propose, therefore, toinquire very briefly how the character of spatial extension becomesassociated with the data of Vision. 

The objects of Vision appear to be displayed before us in immensemultitude, each distinct from its adjacent neighbour, yet allinter-related as parts of one single whole--the presentation thusconstituting what is called Extensity. 

This is the most commonly employed meaning of the term spatial. Yet itis evidently in its origin rather temporal than spatial. In ordinarymovement we encounter by touch various obstacles, but only a very few ofthese impress us at any one moment of time. On the contrary, theysucceed one after the other. To the blind, therefore, as Platner longago remarked: Time serves instead of Space. In Vision, on the otherhand, a large number, which it would take a very long time to encounterin touch, are presented _simultaneously_. In this there is an immensepractical advantage, the result being that we come habitually to directour every action by reference to the data of Sight. Now it is becausethese data--so simultaneously presented--are employed by us as theguides of action that their presentation acquires the character which wedenominate Extensity. The simultaneous occurrence of a large number ofSounds does not seem to us to present such a character. But let ussuppose that all the objects which constitute obstacles to our Activityemitted Sounds by which they were recognised; it is not doubtful thatthese would then come to be employed by us as the guides of our Activityand would acquire in our minds the character of Extensity. They wouldarrange themselves in a cotemporaneous, extensive, or spatial relationto one another just as the objects of Vision do at present. 

It is only, therefore, when we come to employ the simultaneouspresentation of Vision as the instrument of our Activity and the guideof Action that it acquires the character commonly called extensive. _Successive_ visual sensations convey no extensive suggestion. 

It is important to realise the nature of this peculiar feature in thedata of Vision. The sounds which we hear, the odours which we smell, arethe immediate result of certain undulations affecting the appropriateorgan of sensation. We refer these to the object in which theundulations originate. In like manner a light which we see is referredto its objective luminous source. But light also and in addition isreflected from, and thus reveals the presence of the whole body of ourresistant environment. Hence is derived the coloured presentation ofVision to which the character of extensity attaches. Nothing similartakes place in the case of the other distantial sensations. If sonorousundulations excited vibration in every resistant object of theenvironment they would undoubtedly come to arrange themselves in anorder resembling the extensity suggested by Vision, though the slowerrate of transmission of sound would detract from the practicalsimultaneity in the effect which, as we have seen, largely accounts forthe perception of visual extensity. The universal diffusion of sunlightis also a determining factor. 

 * * * * *

The matter becomes still clearer when we contrast the experience ofvident men with what we have been able to learn of the experiences ofthe blind. Nowhere have we found this aspect of the question discussedwith the same clearness and ability as by M. Pierre Villey in hisrecently published essay, _Le Monde des Aveugles_--Part III. 

The blind man, as he remarks, requires representations in order tocommand his movements. We must then penetrate the mind of the blind andascertain what are his representations. Are they, he asks, muscularimages combined by temporal relations, or are they images of a spatialorder? He replies without hesitation: Both, but, above all, spatialimages. It is clear, he says, that the modalities of the action of theblind are explained by spatial representations. These must be derivedfrom touch. What, then, can be the spatial representations which arisefrom touch? The blind, he says, are often asked, How do you figure toyourself such and such an object, a chair, a table, a triangle? M. Villey quotes Diderot as affirming that the blind cannot imagine. According to Diderot, images require colour, and colour being totallywanting to the blind the nature of their imagination was to himinconceivable. The common opinion, says M. Villey, is entirely withDiderot. It does not believe that the blind can have images of theobjects around him. The photographic apparatus is awanting and thephotograph cannot therefore be there. 

Diderot was a sensationalist. For this school, as Villey remarks, _l'image est le décalque de la sensation_, and he refers not merely toCondillac the friend of Diderot but to his continuator Taine whosedictum we have already quoted. 

Diderot attempts to solve the problem by maintaining that tactualsensations occupy an extended space which the blind in thought can addto or contract, and in this way equip himself with spatial conceptions. 

There would, on this view, as M. Villey remarks, be a completeheterogeneity between the imagination of the blind and that of thevident. M. Villey denies this altogether. He affirms that the image ofan object which the blind acquires by touch readily divests itself ofthe characters of tactual sensation and differs profoundly from these. He takes the example of a chair. The vident apprehends its variousfeatures simultaneously and at once; the blind, by successive tactualpalpations. But he maintains that the evidence of the blind is unanimouson this point, that once formed in the mind the idea of the chairpresents itself to him immediately as a whole, --the order in which itsfeatures were ascertained is not preserved, and does not require to berepeated. Indeed, the idea divests itself of the great bulk of thetactual details by which it was apprehended, whilst the muscularsensations which accompanied the act of palpation never seek to bejoined with the idea. This divestiture of sensation proceeds to such anextent that there is nothing left beyond what M. Villey calls the pureform. The belief in the reality of the object he refers to itsresistance. The origin of each of these is exertional. The features uponwhich the mind dwells, if it dwells upon them at all, are _les qualitésqui sont constamment utiles pour la pratique_--in a word, the dynamicsignificance of the thing. 

We may remark that much the same is true of the ideas of the vident. Inordinary Discourse we freely employ our ideas of external objectswithout ever attempting a detailed reproduction of the visual image. Such a reproduction would be both impracticable and unnecessary, andwould involve such a sacrifice of time as to render Discourse altogetherimpossible. All that the Mind of the vident ordinarily grasps andutilises in his discursive employment of the idea of any physical thingis what we have ventured to call its dynamic significance. And the verycareful analysis which M. Villey has made of the mental conceptions ofthe blind clearly shows that in their case he has reached exactly thesame conclusion. 

Our fundamental conceptions of the external world are therefore derivedfrom and are built up out of the data of our exertional Activitycombined with the interruptions which that Activity perpetuallyencounters, and in which sensations arise. It would indeed be a usefulwork of psychological analysis if the conditions of exertional actionwere carefully and systematically investigated--much more useful thanmost of the trifling experiments to which psychological laboratories areusually devoted. 

The principal elements of such a scheme would be--

(1) The force of gravity. This force constantly operating constrainsthe organism to be in constant contact with the earth on which we live. But, further, it gives us the definite idea of _Direction_. It is fromthe action of gravity that we derive our distinction between Up and Downfrom which as a starting-point we build up our conception oftridimensional Space. And in this respect it must be remembered that asthe areas of spheres are proportional to the squares of their radii itnecessarily follows that gravity if it acts uniformly in tridimensionalSpace _must_ vary in intensity in proportion to the square of thedistance of the point of application from the centre of origin. Gravityand tridimensionality are in short necessarily connected. 

(2) The same law which determines the force of gravity seems todetermine also the force of cohesion, and therefore the form of materialbodies. These, therefore, are necessarily subject also totridimensionality, and in the force which generates solid form we find asecond source of our elementary spatial ideas. 

Such form is the expression of an obstacle to action which determinesall our movements, and in which we discover those forms of thelimitations of activity which we call spatial characters. 

(3) Organic Dualism is a third determinant of activity, and thus also asource of spatial ideas. 

The structural dualism of the human body, its right and left, its frontand back, etc. , furnish our activity with a set of constant forms towhich its action must conform, and which necessarily also partake of, and help us to conceive of tridimensional form. It is interesting tonote that this dualism characterises the organs specially adapted toserve exertional action rather than those which serve our vegetal ornutrient life. 

The way in which our spatial conceptions are ever extended and built upout of the data of action is also well illustrated in the case of theblind, and to this also M. Villey devotes an interesting chapter underthe title _La conquête des représentations spatiales_. 

This is effected in their case by the high development of what we mustcall active touch. Just as we distinguish between hearing and listening, between seeing and looking, so must we distinguish between touching and_palpation_. 

Mere passive touch gives a certain amount of information, butcomparatively little. It is necessary to _explore_; that is what is donein active touch--palpation--of different degrees. 

The sensitiveness of the skin varies at different places from the tonguedownwards. Palpation by the fingers marks a further stage. The blindalso, we are told, largely employ the feet in walking as a source oflocative data. 

To the concepts reached by such palpation with the hand, M. Villey givesthe name of Manual Space. In this connection he thinks it necessary todistinguish between synthetic touch and analytic touch--the formerresulting from the simultaneous application of different parts of thehand on the surface of a body, the latter that which we owe to themovements of our fingers when having only one point of contact with theobject the fingers follow its contour. Various examples of the delicacyof the information thus obtainable are given. Following two straightlines with the thumb and index respectively, a blind man can acquire bypractice a sensibility so complete as to enable him to detect theslightest divergence from parallelism. 

The analysis passes on from the data of Space manual to those of Spacebrachial; then to the information derived from walking and othermovements of the lower limbs, and then to the co-ordination of theinformation derived from the sensations of hearing, which is necessarilyvery important to the blind. 

The conclusion of the whole matter is that our principal spatial ideasare common alike to the blind and the vident. Both can be taught and aretaught the same geometry. Both understand one another in thedescription of spatial conditions. The common element cannot possibly besupplied either by the data of visual sensation which the blind do notpossess, or by the data of passive tactual sensation which the videnthardly ever employ. _Une étendue commune se retrouverait à la fois dansles données de la vue et dans celles du toucher. _ The common element isfurnished by the common laws and forms of our exertional Activity bymeans of which and in terms of which we all construct our conceptions ofthe dynamic world of our environment. 

 * * * * *

It is from our dynamic Activity also that we derive our conception ofForce. Force, though it is studied scientifically in the measurement ofthe great natural forces which operate constantly, is originally knownto us in the stress or pressure to which muscular exertion in contactwith a material body gives rise. Such a force if it could be correctlymeasured, would record the rate at which Energy was undergoingtransmutation, and it is from such experience of pressure that our ideaof Force is originally derived. 

The mass of bodies is usually measured by their weight, _i. E. _ bygravity. Its absolute measurement must be in terms of momentum. The trueestimate of the Energy of a body moving under the impulse of a constantForce is stated in the formula 1/2MV{2}. To ascertain M, therefore, wemust have given F and V, and these are both conceptions the originalidea of which is derived from our exertional activity. 

Quantity of Matter originally means the same as amount of resistance toinitiation of motion, at first estimated by the varying amount ofpersonal muscular energy required to effect the motion in question, thereafter objectively and scientifically by comparison with someindependent standard whereby a more exact estimation can be attainedthan was possible by a mere reference to the varying inferences of theindividual who might exert the force. 

Space, Mass, Force are all therefore ideas which are furnished to us outof our experience as potent actors, and the recognition of this greattruth provides us with the means of clearly apprehending and co-relatingour conceptions of the external world, the framework of our Knowledge. 

The true distinction between a _percept_ and a _concept_ is just that apercept is a concept associated with the dynamic system discovered inand by our exertional activity. 

In like manner we find here the true solution of the many questionswhich have been raised as to the distinction between general andabstract, singular and concrete terms. 

Language expresses action: the roots of language are expressions of theelementary acts which make up experience. They are therefore general. Each applies to every act of the class in question. They are alsoconcrete. That is so because they refer to exertional activities. Abstract terms are terms abstracted from this dynamic reference. Thus_white_ is concrete because colour is a property of the dynamic world. But when this property is considered apart from its dynamic support itis called _whiteness_, and becomes abstract. In the case of purelymental qualities the term is regarded as abstract simply because thequality is in every reference extra dynamic. Thus _candour_, _justice_are called abstract terms; they are properties of the Mind. But aproperty of the dynamic system, _e. G. _ Gravitation, does not strike usas abstract--the sole distinction being the dynamic reference which thelatter term implies. 

It will even be seen that there is sometimes a shading off of abstractquality. Thus _Justice_ as an attribute of the Mind strikes us as apurely abstract term. But as the word takes up a dynamic reference sodoes its abstraction diminish. Thus in the expression "Administration ofJustice" the abstractive suggestion is less pronounced; till in theperson of Justice Shallow it vanishes in the very concrete. 

Behind and beneath all these considerations we should never lose sightof the great main facts--that thought is an activity; that its functiontherefore is to represent or reproduce our pure exertional activity;that such representation is _at the basis_ of all our concepts ofexternality; that sensation, _per se_ is mere interruption of activity;that _per se_ it possesses no spatial or extensive or externalsuggestiveness; that sensations nevertheless serve to denote or givefeature and particularity to our experience of activity; that allperception of the external is at bottom therefore a mentalrepresentation of exertional activity and its forms, denoted, punctuated, identified by sensation, which latter by itself, we repeat, carries no suggestion of externality. This view revolutionises the wholepsychology of Perception, and therefore, though it at once gives to thatscience a much-needed unity, clarity, and simplicity, it will naturallybe accepted with reluctance by the laborious authors of the cumbroustheories still generally current. 

FOOTNOTES:

[18:1] His reason is that we _ab origine_ localise sensations withreference to our organism. This, of course, means by reference to thesystem of potent energy in which our organism essentially consists. 

III

THE TWO TYPICAL THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE

The evolution of living organisms is in general a gradual and continuousprocess. But it is nevertheless true that it presents well-marked stagesand can best be described by reference to these. Frequently, moreover, the meaning and true nature of the movement at one stage is onlyrevealed after a subsequent stage has been reached. 

The development of a brain or cerebrum marks one important advance. Thepresence of this organ renders possible to the animal in varying degreewhat are called representations of objects, and the faculty of makingsuch representations appears to be a condition precedent to thedevelopment of deliberation, volition, and purposive action as opposedto reflex or instinctive activity. The latter is speciallycharacteristic of other orders of organic existence such as theArticulata--being remarkably exemplified in the activities of the socialinsects such as the bee. 

The advent of man with his faculty of Discourse may be regarded asmarking another distinct stage in the evolutionary movement--a stage, moreover, the operations of which throw light upon the whole nature ofcerebral representations. The faculty of rational Discourse, asMax Müller pointed out, is denominated in Greek by the word λόγος, applicable at once to the mental activity and to its appropriateexpression in speech. Discourse is an instrument by means of which manhas been enabled to construct his whole system of representations of theworld in which he lives, the system of what is commonly called hisKnowledge. Human Knowledge just is the body of man's representations ofhis Experience in the world of which he forms a part. It is notnecessary to insist here on the gradual but remarkable growth andextension which Human Knowledge has undergone during the last twothousand years. Concurrently with its extension man's ability to controlthe forces of Nature has been enlarged and increased. At the same time, however, that extension has rendered possible false developments andaberrations to which the more limited representations of the brute areless liable. 

With the faculty of rational Discourse constantly striving to extend thebounds of Knowledge, man came in time to attempt to give an account notonly of the immediate objects which surround him, but of the whole choirof Heaven and furniture of Earth. In this advance the Greeks took aleading part. 

When we first make acquaintance through historical records with theintellectual activity of the Greek mind, we find it engaged in theconstruction of various such schemes for an explanation of theworld--usually called cosmogonies. 

It was at this stage of intellectual progress that what we might call aninterruption occurred in the normal process of evolution. Greatintellectual activity had for some time prevailed in the Greekcommunities; several men of conspicuous genius--notably Heracleitus andParmenides--had carried speculation as to the origin and nature of theworld to a height hitherto undreamt of. These achievements and theconsciousness of continual progress had engendered in Athensparticularly what might be called an epidemic of intellectual pride. 

On this scene Socrates appeared, plain, blunt, critical. His teachingwas in effect an appeal to men to reflect: to turn their attention awayfrom the world which they were supposed to be explaining to thecontemplation of their own Minds by which the explanation wasfurnished. γνῶθι σεαυτόν was his motto. All explanations of theUniverse or of Experience were, as he showed, vain unless the CognitiveFaculty by which they were constructed were operating truly. Inparticular, the process of Rational Discourse implied the use ofconcrete general terms, which were recognised to be the essentialinstruments of Cognition. Socrates therefore devoted his attentionspecially to a critical examination of these general terms and also ofthe abstract terms which were the familiar instruments of Discourse. 

The Greeks of that day were endowed with a singular clearness ofintellectual vision. They readily recognised that Knowledge was anintellectual process; they appreciated the activity of Thought orRational Discourse as essential to its formation. They quite understoodthat Knowledge is not of the nature of a photograph--a resemblantpictorial reproduction of the data furnished by sensation. Only verycasually and occasionally do we ever attempt to supply ourselves with aresemblant reproduction of our sensations. Obviously such a reproductionwould only be of value memorially and could tell us nothing new. 

These early Greeks realised this, and they appear to have realised alsopretty clearly that it would be impossible by means of such pictorialimpressions to establish any community of Knowledge. It is of theessence of Knowledge that it is something which can be communicated to, and which is the common possession of, several individuals. That cannever be true of sensation. We can never tell whether our sensations arethe same as those of other people--never at any rate by means ofsensations themselves; never unless and until such sensations have beeninter-related by some other instrument. A mere photographic reproductionof sensation is thus quite useless as a means of Knowledge. 

In some way or other general terms supply the common bond. Therecognition of this fact was one of the great results of the Socraticdiscussion. This explains the immense importance which Socratesnaturally attached to the criticism of general and abstract terms. 

 * * * * *

The work of Socrates in this direction was immediately taken up andcarried much further by Plato. Plato maintained that these general andabstract terms were in truth the names of ideas (εἲδη) with which themind is naturally furnished, and further that these ideas correspondedto and typified the eternal forms of things--the essential constituentsof the real world. Knowledge was possible because there were sucheternal forms or ideal elements--the archetypes--of which the εἴδηwere the counterparts and representations. 

Knowledge, Plato held, was concerned solely with these eternal forms, not with sensation at all. The sensible world was in a state of constantflux and could not be the object of true science. Its apprehension waseffected by a faculty or capacity (_Republic_, v. 478-79) midway betweenKnowledge and nescience to which he applied the term δόξα, frequentlytranslated _opinion_, but which in this connection would be much moreaccurately rendered, _sensible impression_, or even perception. At anyrate, the term _opinion_ is a very unhappy one, and does not convey thetrue meaning at all, for no voluntary intellective act on the part ofthe subject was implied by the term. Now intelligence in constructing ascheme of Knowledge is active. The ideas are the instruments of thisactivity. 

Plato's doctrine of ideas was probably designed or conceived by him asaffording an explanation also of the community of Knowledge. Heemphasised the fluent instability of the sensible impression, and as wehave already pointed out, sensation in itself labours also under thisdrawback that it contains and affords no common nexus whereby theconceptions or perceptions of one man can be compared or related withthose of another. 

Indeed, if Experience were composed solely of sensations, eachindividual would be an isolated solipsistic unit--incapable of rationalDiscourse or communication with his fellow-men. To cure this defect, Plato offered the ideas--universal forms common to the intelligence ofevery rational being. Not only would they render possible a commonKnowledge of Reality--the existence of such ideas would necessarily alsogive permanence, fixity, law, and order to our intellectual activity. Our Knowledge would not be a mere random succession of impressions, buta definitely determined organic unity. 

In all this argument it must be remembered Plato never said or suggestedthat the intellect of man--thus equipped with ideal forms--was therebyenabled to become, or did become, the creator of the world by and inwhich each one believes himself to be surrounded and included. He alwaysdistinguished between Idea and Reality, between Thought and Thing. Theideas were types of the forms immanent in things themselves. It has beensaid by some scholars that he generally distinguished between the twoby the employment of distinct terms, applying εἷδος to the mentalconception and ἰδέα to the substantial form. This verbal distinctionwas accepted by many scholars of the epoch of Liddell and Scott andDavies and Vaughan. A reference to this distinction in the presentwriter's essay on _The Dynamic Foundation of Knowledge_ provoked at theinstance of one critic the allegation that it is not borne out by acritical study of the Platonic texts. That is a matter of little momentand one upon which the writer cannot claim to pronounce. The importantpoint is that in one way or another Plato undoubtedly distinguishedbetween and indeed contrasted the idea and the substantial form. Notrace of the solipsism which results from their being confounded andwhich has ultimately brought to destruction the imposing edifice ofHegelian Thought is to be found in his writings. 

 * * * * *

The Platonic doctrine of ideas speedily found an energetic critic inAristotle. In Aristotle's view, it was quite unnecessary andunwarrantable to postulate the existence in the Mind of ideal forms orcounterparts of the substantial forms of Reality. This, according tohim, was a wholly unnecessary reduplication. He was content to believethat the mind found and recognised the essential forms of things whenthey were presented to it in perceptive Experience. _Universalia in re_were conceived by him as sufficiently explaining the genesis ofcognition without the postulation of any such _universalia extra rem_. 

 * * * * *

To the Platonic doctrine he offered the further objection that theeternal forms of things which that doctrine affirmed and which itdeclared to be represented in their ideal types were necessarilyimpotential. There was no generative power in the pure activity ofThought. If, therefore, the essentials of Reality were ideal, itfollowed that they also were impotent, and incapable of causativeefficacy. The sensible world, however, was a fluent and perpetuallygenerated stream, which required some potent cause to uphold it. 

The eternal Reality which sustained the world was for him an Energyconstantly generating the actual, and no conception which failed toprovide for this process of causative generation of the things of Sensecould in his view adequately account for the phenomena of Nature norconsequently could constitute the system of science. 

In this argument Aristotle undoubtedly expressed a profound truth, butit may perhaps be admitted that he rather failed to appreciate fullythe difficulty which the Platonic doctrine was designed to meet--that, namely, of providing some sort of common nexus or unifying principle bywhich the validity of Knowledge could be maintained. For he had nocertain means of showing that the potent energy of Nature was unitaryand homogeneous. 

He is frequently described as a sensationalist, but such a view iscertainly incorrect. This, however, may be admitted--that he sought theessentials of Reality not in the Mind but in the Object. It may befairly claimed that to this extent he occupied common ground with thesensationalists, in that he was an adherent of the _tabula rasa_ view ofthe Mind, expressed in the maxim:--

_Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuit in sensu. _

 * * * * *

Plato and Aristotle may be taken as typical of the two principalintellectual tendencies which have characterised all subsequentspeculation--the Platonist, he who finds in the constitution of the Mindthe eternal principles or at least the types of the eternal principlesof Reality; the Aristotelian, he for whom these seem to reside in theobject and, in the act of Cognition, are merely impressed upon, transferred to, presented to, or otherwise introduced into orapprehended by the Mind. 

The Aristotelian view of Nature as an energetic process failed toimpress itself upon his successors. Greek Philosophy soon afterAristotle's death decayed or was deprived of its early vigour, and thedoctrine which survived the wreck was essentially derived, howeverimperfectly, from the Platonic theory. 

Throughout the first fifteen hundred years of the Christian era thisdoctrine undoubtedly dominated the course of speculation--a speculationof which much is now forgotten and almost as much was certainly barrenand unfruitful, but of which we would entertain a very mistaken notionif we were to imagine that it was not often pursued with great subtletyand acumen. 

One natural result of the fact that such a principle dominated humanthought was the prevalence of a belief that the explanation of Natureand natural processes could be derived from the cognitive facultyitself. Our cognition of our immediate surroundings was doubtlesscontinuously corrected by immediate practical tests. But the science ofa more extended view of Nature was vitiated by this false principle andin consequence for many centuries our whole Knowledge of Nature remainedunprogressive and unfruitful. 

_Causa æquat effectum_, Nature abhors a vacuum, are examples of themaxims derived or supposed to be derived from the necessities of ourReason, and by the aid of which it was vainly hoped to attain aknowledge of Nature and natural laws. 

The principle was in itself unsound. 

The necessary laws of our rational faculty could discover to us only theessentials of that faculty itself. 

The maxims by which it was sought to constitute _a priori_ a scheme ofnatural laws could not justly claim descent from the necessities ofThought. Had the Schoolmen formed a true conception of the nature ofKnowledge they would never have imagined that any necessity of Thoughtobliged them to believe that a 10 lb. Weight would fall to the groundmore rapidly than a 1 lb. Weight. Equally true is it that theirscientific principles had not been derived from any study of the actionof natural law. They were unacknowledged intellectual orphans. 

The movement associated with the names of Galileo, Bruno, Bacon, Kepler, and Newton owed its origin and its success to the abandonment of thisvicious principle. So far as Nature was concerned, the Mind was regardedas a _tabula rasa_, and the physician set himself to ascertain the lawsof nature not by reflection upon his own mental processes orrequirements, but by experiment with and observation of naturalprocesses themselves. The result has been the establishment of modernscience--the greatest triumph which the human mind has yet achieved. 

 In a criticism of the writer's essay on _The Dynamic Foundation of Knowledge_ in the _Revue neo-scolastique_ of Louvain, the critic wrote as follows: "Remarquons qu'il n'a pas compris la synthèse scolastique du moyen âge, elle qui cependant a concilié d'une façon admirable l'_actuel_ et le _potentiel_ dans l'explication de la nature des choses. Il s'est mepris aussi sur les caractères de la méthode scolastique de connaître la constitution intime du monde experimental; il croît cette méthode exclusivement deductive. "

 We have felt that candour demanded that we should quote the foregoing passage--coming as it does from a source exceptionally well qualified to express an opinion. If we have nevertheless allowed ourselves in the precedent paragraphs of this essay to express again the view which this critic seeks to qualify, but which we still think in the main sound, we are at the same time very glad to be able in this way to invite attention to the undoubted fact that the distinction between the actual and the potential was recognised by the schoolmen as of a very deep significance. We believe further that the real secret of the failure of mediævalism to extend its Knowledge of Nature was not so much a preference for deductive over inductive methods as the failure to realise that Nature was a dynamic operation. 

It is important, then, to understand accurately what is the method ofScience. 

The external world of our Experience seems to be composed of sensibleimpressions. The ever present visual panorama combined with the constantoccurrence of other sensations suggests that Nature is, as has so oftenbeen asserted, simply another name for the sensible presentation. Atruer view of Nature was adumbrated by Aristotle when he formulated thetheory of an Energy ever generative of the sensible. If the founders ofScience did not fully grasp the Aristotelian conception, it is at leastcertain that they looked upon Nature not merely as a sensiblepresentation but as a process--a dynamic operation. It was to the studyof these operations, to the measurement of the natural forces or normalcategories of physical action that Galileo and Newton devotedthemselves. The true estimate of a moving force may indeed be said tohave been their first great problem, just as the law of universalgravitation was their grandest generalisation. 

It was to this sure instinct that the founders of Science owed theirsuccess. Had they devoted themselves to the mere study of sensations--ofblue things and green things, of hard things and soft things, of loudthings and silent things--Science as an efficient and co-ordinatedsystem would never have come into being. 

 * * * * *

Having struck the right path, they moved rapidly along it, leaving theSchoolmen and Philosophers behind them, suspicious, hostile, and amazed. 

But Philosophy did not remain altogether negative. The new movementextended itself to Metaphysics, and under the leadership of Descartes aresolute effort was made to reform Philosophy on sympathetic lines. 

It was in the true spirit of Socrates that Descartes advanced his famousmethod of Doubt. The whole fabric of beliefs and rational principles wasto be subjected to a re-examination, and Descartes found himself onbedrock when he touched his famous _Cogito, ergo sum. _ The simple factor act of Doubt implied the Activity--the Reality therefore--of theDoubter. But the cogitant subject was reduced very much to the conditionof a _tabula rasa_, and when Descartes proceeded to fill up the blankwith a rediscovery on more scientific lines of the essentials ofCognition he found his basal feature in Extension. Tridimensional Spaceseemed the simple elementary framework of our Knowledge of Nature. 

The method of Descartes was further extended by the English philosopherLocke. Those qualities which formed the elements of Knowledge weredescribed by him as the primary qualities of body; the sensiblepresentation comprised also the secondary qualities which seemed to bein some way superposed upon and contained within the former. 

 * * * * *

Our fundamental ideas of Nature were called by Locke sensible ideas. These ideas were derived from our sensible Experience, and it is onlyjust to Locke to point out that, when examined in detail, his sensibleideas are seen to be not mere qualifications of sensation, but ratherthe elementary characters of Nature viewed as a dynamic process anddiscovered by our Activity. Yet the ambiguous term _sensible ideas_unfortunately led to their being regarded as ideas derived, not from ouraction in any form, but from pure sensation alone. 

This extraordinary error was intensified in the speculation of Berkeleyand Hume. Experience with them appeared to consist solely of asuccession of sensations appearing to, impressing, or affecting a_tabula rasa_ of consciousness. 

Of course in such a state of affairs all Knowledge would be impossible. The scepticism which logically followed from such a doctrine was toouniversal to be capable even of the fiction that it was credible. Berkeley, it is true, endeavoured to save the situation by postulatingthe incessant and immediate intervention of the Deity as the sustainerof the sensible panorama. This purely arbitrary and fictitious expedientwas entirely rejected by Hume, who with fearless honesty carried to itsultimate results the direct consequences of the doctrine and thencomplacently left human Knowledge to take care of itself. 

 * * * * *

A masterly protest against the position of Hume was made by hiscountryman Reid, who in his _Inquiry into the Human Mind_ very clearlypointed out the fundamental difference between the sensibleaccompaniments or constituents of our Experience and the real andindependently existent substratum by which that Experience is sustainedand organised. His argument, though it attracted considerable attention, did not, however, affect as deeply as might have been expected thefuture of philosophic speculation, probably because he offered no newclue or key whereby to detect the origin and account for the presence inour Experience of those enduring and substantial elements or forms bywhich it is sustained, but on the contrary left their recognition towhat he rather vaguely described as common sense. 

 * * * * *

Much more influential was the elaborate answer of Kant, which hasprofoundly affected the course of Metaphysics since its publication. Reverting in principle to the platonic method, Kant again sought theenduring elements, the fundamentals of Science, in the constitution ofthe cognitive faculty itself. But very differently from Plato hediscovered these in the categories or essential forms of intellectiveaction, --the category of causality and dependence and the so-calledforms of the transcendental æsthetic--Time and Space. Under thesecategories the indefinite data of sensation were thought to be organisedinto a cognisable system. 

A rapid advance of speculation along the lines signalised by Kant tookplace after his work was published, and for many years this movement wasregarded by a large part of the speculative world as the most hopefuland progressive of philosophic efforts, and by its own votaries asplacing them in a position of superiority to all other schools ofthought. The thoroughness of their studies and introspective methods tosome extent justified, or at least excused the arrogance of theirpretensions. 

But it is to-day almost unnecessary even to criticise this Philosophy. 

From the first it was foredoomed to failure, and had no prospect ofsucceeding where Plato--equipped with armour from the same forge--hadalready failed. 

 * * * * *

Kantianism like Platonism failed because it still left the sensibleunaccounted for. Not only did it fail to tell us whence came thesesensations which, however transitory and unreal, constantly saluted ourconsciousness and largely constituted our Experience; it failed also toshow us how they could be brought into relation with the faculty ofKnowledge. 

Finding its elemental forms in the structure of the organ of Knowledge, it failed to tell us how we ever managed by means of these to get beyondour own subjective states, or how we ever came to think that there was aWorld outside of the individual consciousness, by the categories ofwhich, according to them, our cognitions of such a World were calledinto being. For if Reality were unknowable except by and through thecategories, then our Knowledge of Reality was the creature of our ownmental activity, and we must still remain unable to understand why weshould suppose that we had got beyond ourselves. 

These defects of Kantianism were early recognised by Schopenhauer, whoalso appears to have realised that what was wanted was another and a newkey to unlock the gateway of Knowledge. 

Knowledge was in essence an affirmation or series of affirmations abouta real World distinct from the Knower. It was surely now obvious thatthe warrant for such affirmations and the source of their validity mustcome from somewhere beyond the cognitive faculty itself. The source uponwhich men again and again have seemed to fall back is Sensation; butSensation being transitory and dependent for its existence upon itsbeing felt can really give us no help. Some other, some self-existentthing is wanted, and with considerable insight Schopenhauer suggestedthat the key was to be found in the Will. 

But this theory, though it has lately attracted considerable attention, can hardly be claimed as offering any definite prospect of a solution. Its cardinal defect is that it still fails to show how the sensiblearises. It is supposed to be generated out of pure Volition, but nocausal nexus, no direct connection of any kind is immediately apparentbetween the two, and Schopenhauer in developing his theory did nothingto supply the want. The doctrine cannot therefore be regarded as morethan a helpful stepping-stone to the true answer. 

 * * * * *

In recent years various forms of opportunist philosophies under thenames of Pragmatism, Pluralism, etc. , have endeavoured to elude thepressure of the dilemma and to solace mankind for the failure ofKantianism by advising them to accept Experience as it is. But thoughsuch a counsel of resignation may in a popular sense of the term beregarded as philosophical it can hardly be accepted as a solution. 

 * * * * *

We find, then, that since man first began to inquire reflectively uponthe nature of his cognitive faculty his speculation has followed one orother of two great lines or divisions of theory, neither of which hasbeen found to afford intellectual satisfaction. 

We have (1) the theory that seeks in some way or other to derive thereal constituents of Science from the constitution of the cognitivefaculty itself. To this theory, which has inspired one whole stream ofspeculation from Plato to Hegel, there are at least two absolutely fatalobjections. 

(_a_) It fails altogether to account for the sensible presentation whichhowever fluent and unstable appears to stand in a direct and evenunique relation to the real. It fails to let us understand how thatrelation arises, how the sensible is generated, or how it enters intoour consciousness. 

(_b_) We are unable under this theory to discover how we ever reach aKnowledge of the real World, how we can get beyond ourselves, how if theMind in its search for truth is perpetually intercepted by its own formsit can ever furnish us with any genuine cognitions of the external. 

(2) We have the theory that the essential forms of Reality are to befound in the Object and are thence supplied to the Understanding, whichplays the part merely of a receptive surface or _tabula rasa_. 

In the hands of Aristotle this doctrine took the form of an affirmationthat Nature must be regarded as an energetic process containing withinitself the potency by which it perpetually generated the actual. 

Promising as it was in Aristotle's hands, this speculation was notcarried forward or assimilated by his immediate successors. Indeed, itwas practically forgotten until the intellectual revival of thesixteenth century, which inaugurated the foundations of modern Science. However little the fact may have been consciously recognised even bythe leaders of scientific discovery, this was the conception of Naturewhich inspired and sustained the scientific advance. In the departmentof philosophic speculation, however, it appeared only under the debasedand misleading form of a belief that the sensible presentation was thetrue source of the contents of Cognition, that it was from Sensationthat the Mind of Man derived the whole fabric of Science. "_Penser c'estsentir_" was the form in which it was expressed by Condillac, but wasequally the view which commended itself to Berkeley, at least in hisearly writings, to Hume, and to a whole army of successors down to J. S. Mill. 

We hope we have already sufficiently emphasised the falsity of such aview. Obviously, if the Mind were merely the passive recipient of astream of impressions, no sort of rational Discourse, no scientific orcognitive effort could ever have been stimulated into activity, and thevery ideas of causality and relation, indeed all that we associate withthe exercise of the understanding, could never have been called intobeing. 

Upon neither of these views of the nature of Knowledge can we arrive atany consistent or intelligible conception of its genesis, nature, ormethod of operation. 

What, then, must we do? It is hardly doubtful that if we are to makeany progress we must find another and a new key whereby to unlock thedouble door that bars the entrance to the inner shrine of truth. 

Now _the_ fundamental, or at least _a_ fundamental error characteristicof all these various efforts after a solution is to be found in the factthat they view the World as a static thing rather than as a kineticprocess. 

The World to vision seems a great still thing in or on which no doubtinnumerable bodies are moving to and fro, but which itself--thefundamental thing--is solid and unchanging. But this is an illusion. Theseemingly unchanging features are changeless only in the monotony oftheir constant mutation. 

Cohering masses are rigid in respect only of the constancy of thedynamic process of transmutation in which cohesion consists. The sunshines eternally steady only in consequence of the ceaseless kineticenergies which give it being. 

What we are ever doing in rational Discourse, what Knowledge constantlyaccomplishes, is to furnish an account, a reproduction of a series ofoperations. The World is a process--an activity. That was recognised aslong ago as the days of Heracleitus, but his disciples didnot--although we think there is good ground for believing that hedid[60:1]--his disciples did not realise that a process, whilst itimplies constant flux and change, implies also something permanent evenin its mutations, something which undergoes the change and sustains theflow. 

To understand a thing is to discover how it _operates_. The eternalforms of things are laws of natural action. Such are the law ofgravitation, the laws of optics or of chemical combination. A staticpicture unless so interpreted must be at once valueless and meaningless. 

It follows that Thought and Discourse, in furnishing us with Knowledge, must themselves be active, and must in some way or other reproduce theactivity of Nature. Thought, in short, _is_ an Activity which reproducesthe activity of things, the activity in which the phenomena of Naturearise. 

But how do we arrive at any apprehension of Natural Action? What informsus that Nature is a potency ever operative? What suggests to us theconception of potency at all? We reply that we arrive at the idea ofpotent action because we are ourselves active beings. Our organismmaintains itself by constant physiological activities. These are thepermanent constancies of transmutation which _constitute_ the organism. 

But superimposed upon these there are our voluntary exertionalactivities. By these latter we necessarily mingle with and indeedparticipate in the action of the natural forces which (as we usuallysay) surround us, but which in point of fact do more than surround us. The disparate grouping of natural bodies in vision blinds us to the factthat we are really not merely surrounded by but are mingled with andparticipate in the dynamic system. [61:1] We are continually pressingwith our weight upon the bodies on which we rest, we are continuallyexerting or resisting the pressure of so-called adheringmasses--resistance-points in one dynamic system of which we areourselves a part. Thus it is that in our exertional action we reveal toour consciousness not only the forms of our own activity but the formsof the dynamic system which contains and yet transcends the Sensible andthe Ideal. 

The theory we have suggested enables us to proceed at once to arational explanation of Sensation. 

Sensation is _obstructed action_. A detailed consideration of as many asyou like to take of the myriad constituents of our sensible Experiencewill continually and without exception confirm this simple fact. 

In Nature it is the potent action which is real. It alone can bedirectly represented by the activity of Thought. The mere obstruction ofactivity is not a real thing, hence the unreal character of Sensation. Yet the obstruction being an obstruction of the real action of Natureis, if not real, at least actual and immediate. Nay, its presence in ourExperience, however mutable and unstable it may be, is the only suretest and guarantee of Reality. 

Each of the two leading theories which have dominated speculationpresents one partial aspect of the truth. 

The eternal cognisable element of Reality _is_ apprehended, as thePlatonist holds, by the intellect and by the intellect alone. To thatextent the Platonist is right. That cognisable element is Action. ButAction is denoted for us only in the obstructions which it encounters. These obstructions constitute our World of Sensible Experience, whichis therefore for each of us the sure indicator of the Real. Inrecognising this fact the sensationalist is right in his turn. 

 * * * * *

Not only does the dynamic conception of Nature enable us to account forSensation, but it lets us see how the Sensible World becomes aconstituent of Experience. It is by and through its obstructions andthese only that we featurise or denote our Experience. It is by thebreaks, the turnings in the road that we cognise its course. It is bythe line of rocks and breakers that we define the shore. But we must notmistake the turnings for the roadway nor the shore for the ocean. 

It is in and by our activity that we discover this World of sensibleobstructions. The features of the Sensible World correspond therefore tothe laws of our exertional activity, but the correspondence isrelational, not resemblant. Just so, it is by the reflection of Lightthat we discover the forms of the obstacle which solid bodies oppose tothe radiant undulation. The resultant colours correspond to the form ofthese obstructions; but the correspondence is relational not resemblant. The same is true of sounds, of tactual sensations, of every othersensible obstacle to pure activity. 

By the clouds of smoke we follow or used to follow the progress of thebattle, but the battle is something other than a cloud of smoke. 

We are, as Plato told us in his famous allegory, like prisoners in acave--our attitude averted from the aperture, and it is only by theshadows cast upon the cavern wall that we can interpret the events whichare transacting themselves outside. 

In one sense, therefore, the whole sensible and spatial World is real. At least it is actual; and it affords us the materials from which weconstruct our scheme of phenomena, and by which the kinetic process ofReality is denoted and conceived. 

The question ever and anon occurs to us--How upon this view can we solvethe problem of transcendence? How even on this view of the case do wemanage to get beyond ourselves? How are we in any way helped thereto bythe fact that Reality consists in potent action rather than inSensation?

Again, the answer is significant. In action, that is, in exertionalaction, we are really _part_ of a larger _whole_. Our exertional actionis _ab initio_ mingled in and forms really an integral part of thedynamic system in which our life is involved. The ever operative forcesof Gravity, Cohesion, Chemical Affinity, and so forth are the phenomenalexpression of the laws of energetic transmutation in which we partakeand of which we are organically a part, however apparently separate anddisparate our bodies may seem to be. It is life and feeling, not action, which really distinguish the individual from his environment, at leastfrom his material dynamic environment. Be it noted that what is requiredis not an explanation of how we transcend Experience. That by no effortcan we ever do in Knowledge. All we are required to explain is how wetranscend our Thought and our Sensibility. The answer is: Our Experiencebegins in action, and it begins therefore in a sphere which is beyondthe mere subjective Consciousness, and yet is _organically one_ with theorgans of Cognition and Feeling. 

It is only by a visual fiction that we come to regard our active selvesas distinct from the dynamic system. We cannot, in fact, shake off thebonds of corporeality, of gravity, of all the various restraints of ourorganic activity. 

Relatively, however, the cerebral activity of Thought is liberated fromthe stresses of the dynamic environment; hence the apparent freedom andindependence, under certain conditions, of Thought, Imagination, andVolition. 

A great difficulty in realising this view of Experience is to be foundin the apparent Solidity and Inertia of material bodies. Sensibleexperiences group themselves round these _constancies_. But a materialbody, when its sensible concomitants are abstracted, is nothing morethan a permanent process of energy transmutation the interruption ofwhich in one form or another may originate Sensation. It follows thatthe world of spatially extended bodies is a homogeneous and consistentwhole, reflecting in its laws and forms the real operations by which itis constituted and sustained. But all this actual World is neverthelessphenomenal only, albeit the phenomena are derived from and related tothe Real as change is to the thing which changes. 

To a large extent we are misled by the impressive prominence of thevisual data. In vision we are presented with a system of inter-relatedand simultaneously occurring sensations which we find by experience tobe the sure and certain indicators of the potent obstructions which ouractivity encounters. For this reason we habitually make use of thevisual sign as the guide and instrument of our exertional activity, andthis habitual use leads us to regard the visual presentation as theessential form of Reality. However sure we are that that is a falseview, it yet is very difficult to retrace our steps and re-enter theelemental darkness which involves the blind. 

The philosophic value of the interpretation of Experience by the blindought therefore to be very great. Observations made on the experiencesof the blind and of those to whom vision has been restored are not verynumerous, but many of these recorded by Plainer, the friend of Leibniz, and others are of the highest value, and remarkably confirm the view forwhich we have been contending. 

Undoubtedly, so far as we are aware, the most valuable contribution tothis aspect of the discussion is to be found in a little volume recentlypublished in Paris under the title _Le Monde des Aveugles_. The author, M. Pierre Villey, is himself blind. In the interests of Science he hascast aside the delicacy and reserve which have generally prevented theblind from analysing or at least from discussing the import of theirexperiences. He is also fortunately possessed of a philosophic andhighly cultivated intellect, and has not failed to make himselfacquainted with the general course of metaphysical speculation. 

The present writer has been in correspondence with M. Villey, whoseconclusions remarkably confirm the view for which this essay contends, and he finds that M. Villey recognises the truth of that view. Individual quotations would only detract from the cumulative effect ofhis argument, but we may refer in particular to the interestingdiscussion as to the relations between the space concepts of the blindand those of the vident. The blind can be taught, and are taught, geometry, and can discuss and understand spatial and geometricalproblems. The sensible furniture by which the spatial conceptions of theblind are denoted obviously cannot be visual, and are no doubt largelytactual, whilst on the other hand the vident utilise the visual data tothe almost total exclusion of any other. There must therefore be somecommon measure by means of which a community is established between thespatial conceptions of the blind and those of the vident. M. Villeyconcludes and clearly shows that the common medium is to be found in thefact that our spatial conceptions are fundamentally based upon and areexpressive of the discoveries of our exertional activity. Touch, inshort, is an ambiguous term and includes both passive sensations andthose forms of Activity which we describe when we use the term "feel" asa transitive verb. Just as we distinguish between seeing and looking orbetween hearing and listening, so should we distinguish between touchpassive and touch active or palpation. 

 * * * * *

The view of Science which we have endeavoured to explain has received anotable confirmation from the establishment during the latter part ofthe nineteenth century of the scientific doctrine of Energy. [69:1]

The culmination of the scientific fabric of which Galileo and Newtonlaid the foundations was reached when it was demonstrated that the wholephysical universe must be regarded as composed of Energy, either kineticand actually undergoing transmutation from one form to another, orpotential and quiescent yet containing within itself the quantifiablecapacity of transformation. The objective correlatives of the differentclasses of sensible experiences are found to be different forms whichthis Energy assumes--the kinetic energy of a mass in motion, the radiantenergy of Light, the energy of Heat, the potential energy of chemicalseparation, etc. --all these have now at length been shown to be forms ofone real thing capable under appropriate conditions of being transmutedinto each other and of which not only the inter-transmutability but theequivalent values can be calculated and have been found by experiment tobe fixed and definite. Thus the mechanical equivalent of heat is a fixedand definite quantity. The Energy of a body in motion can be measuredand stated in terms of mass and velocity. 

The profound conception of Aristotle, under which Nature was regarded asa potent Energy containing within itself the capacity of generating thephenomenal World, has again been revived and realised--but with greatadditions. The theory in the hands of Science is now not only confirmedby incessant experiment, but the relation which it affirms betweenreality and phenomenon has been _quantified_. 

Moreover, the actual operations under which the potential generates theactual have, so to say, been laid bare to view; and lastly, theinter-transmutability of all forms of Energy and its real unity havebeen established. 

The doctrine has therefore received a confirmation of which Aristotledid not dream, and its explanation has at the same time received anillumination which his vague if profound adumbration could never afford. With this added support the true conception of human knowledge hasreceived new strength. The theory is still, nevertheless, not to begrasped without a resolute effort of reflection. It involves aninversion of our everyday conceptions more radical than that which wasdemanded by the Copernican theory of astronomy, and we know that thattheory--offered to and rejected by mankind before the beginning of theChristian era--had to wait through sixteen or seventeen hundred yearsbefore it secured an acceptance, at first grudging and even now notalways adequate. 

 * * * * *

The ordinary metaphysical student has hitherto rather resented the ideathat in order to a true solution of the problem of Knowledge he mustacquaint himself with the fundamental conceptions of physics. Yet so itis. It may perhaps be hoped that when the first strangeness of the newposition has disappeared the conditions may be accepted with greaterreadiness. At any rate, a correct apprehension of our fundamentalconceptions of the world of our external experience is indispensable. Notheory can wholly dispense with such conceptions. It is thereforeessential that, however elementary, they should be clear and notcontradictory. Philosophy has always vaguely realised and exacted asmuch. The need is now imperative. 

Some years ago, in an essay on Schopenhauer, the author, Mr. Saunders, remarked, "How the matter of which my arm is composed and that state ofconsciousness which I call my Will [imagine anyone calling Will a stateof consciousness!] are conjoined is a mystery beyond the reach ofScience, and the man who can solve it is the man for whom the world iswaiting. "

Well, if that be so, then the world need not wait any longer. Therequired explanation is offered to metaphysics by the scientific work ofthe physicians who built up and consolidated the modern doctrine ofEnergy. It is true that most of them have continued to postulate thereality of material bodies. For their purpose there was no realdifficulty in doing so. What they required was a datum of configuration, a phenomenal basis upon which their calculations could proceed and interms of which, as a point of origin, their statement of transmutationswas made. The persistence of material bodies is a condition precedent tothe phenomenal manifestations in which our Experience arises. Organicexistence in every form and the world in which it arises presuppose theactuality of these. But dynamically they are merely the phenomenalresult of certain permanent forces constantly in operation. To beings, if there be such, inhabiting the Ether there is little doubt but that agravitation system like that of the sun and its planets must present acorporate rigidity and identity somewhat similar to that which coheringmasses present to our intelligence. But, in terms of reality, Energy, potential and kinetic, containing within itself the potency whichgenerates the actual and sustains the constant transmutation in whichphenomena arise is the sole and only postulate. 

The rise of meta-geometrical methods and other branches of scientificspeculation have led in recent years to a considerable amount of veryinteresting inquiry into the nature of our fundamental geometricalconceptions. Strange to say, a large body of respectable mathematicianshave been found to favour the extraordinary view that our mathematicalconceptions are derived from Sensation. We do not propose here todiscuss at length this idea. It is merely another form of the oldsensationalist view of Knowledge, but we suggest that the conditions ofthe problem will readily appear in their true light and real naturewhenever such inquirers realise the fact that our exertional activity isthe source of our cognitions of the external, and that therefore ourpure exertional activity is the source of the basal concepts ofgeometry. 

Here lies the root of the distinction between pure and empiricalscience. The propositions of geometry, being derived from our own pureactivity, are of the former class; the inductive conclusions of physicalexperimental science, being gathered by observation and measurementfrom sensible data, are empirical and approximate. A geometricalproposition--such, for example, as the assertion that the three anglesof a triangle are equal to two right angles--is not merely approximate. It has no dependence on measurement. It is absolutely true. It isascertained deductively, and therefore measurement is not involved, andis never employed. Its truth is not ascertained by measurement. It isnot verified by measurement. It in no degree depends upon the sensiblefigure. It is equally true for every human being whatever be the degreeof accuracy of the figure by the aid of which he studies it, or indeedwhether he studies it by figure or otherwise, as must necessarily be thecase with the born blind. 

There may be many different forms of energetic transmutation which maydetermine many other forms of space besides that form of tridimensionalspace in which our Activity is involved. For such, a different geometrymay and will be applicable; but for the tridimensional conditions of_our activity_ the proposition is necessary and absolute. No measurementof any stellar parallax, however minute and whatever the result mightbe, could have any bearing on its truth. Geometry is the science of thepure forms of our motor activity amidst corporeal bodies. 

A useful illustration of our argument is to be drawn from aconsideration of the question of phonetic spelling. Occasionally we findpersons urging that all spelling should be an exact reproduction ofsound. Indeed, an improved alphabet has been designed to enable the ideato be carried out with greater accuracy. 

Now it is quite true that it is by their sound that we recognise ordenote our words. Hence our alphabet was originally phonetic inprinciple, and indeed still is so, although the correspondence isimperfect. As the use of visible signs develops spelling seems to fallinto certain fixed frames and to deviate more and more from purephonetic simplicity. But why is this so? It is because the sounds aremerely the symbols or indicators of the different forms of vocalarticulation (vocal acts), and it is really as the symbols andindicators of these actions that they possess any meaning and acquiresuch permanence and identity as they have. The phonetic system, therefore, becomes in use subordinated to the expression of the acts bywhich are produced these radical vocables which constitute theessentials of rational Discourse. 

In all this the process of the expression of words in spelling is amicrocosmic counterpart of the process of cognition as we have tried toexplain it. 

It is noteworthy that the same thing necessarily happens in the case ofany new system of spelling. 

The most prominent advocates of phonetic spelling have been also theauthors of a system of phonetic shorthand. 

Like the written and printed alphabet of Europe, the alphabet ofPhonography was made phonetic. Indeed it started off as a more nearlyperfect phonetic system than the ordinary European alphabet. But as itsuse advances its employment undergoes the same change. The phoneticsymbols are abbreviated by grammalogues and contractions, and thisproceeds in accordance with a principle unconsciously recognised butwhich really depends on the same inherent necessity to preserve in aconsistent form the expression of the radical vocables of Speech. Finally, in the hands of the expert stenographer the system of phoneticshorthand (though he still uses the sound as the guide and indicator ofhis actions) is as far removed from a pure phonetic representation asthe ordinary method of spelling. Indeed, unless some such suprasensibleand unifying principle were available, phonetic spelling would speedilyperish in an infinity of degenerate variations. 

We adduce this illustration as one which very well confirms our mainargument. We have no desire to discuss on its merits the generalquestion of Spelling Reform, which of course is quite apart from theattempt to establish a scheme of spelling on a purely phonetic basis. Amore rational system of spelling is nevertheless an object worthy of allconsideration. 

 * * * * *

Intellectualism and sensationalism have both broken down. The world ofspeculation is anxiously looking for a new clue. Witness the patheticeagerness with which it clutches at every floating straw. Theinnumerable "isms" by which it seeks ever and anon to keep itself afloatare most of them but the sometimes unrecognisable wreckage of the oldsystems drifting about under very inappropriate names. Such terms asRealism and Idealism are freely used (generally prefixing the adjective"new") by writers in philosophic periodicals in a sense which might makePlato, Aquinas, or Kant turn in their graves. 

We see their votaries encumbered with the trappings of a futileerudition of the insignificant or clinging pathetically to the insecurerelics of teleological doctrine, or, still less virile, seeking supportin a return to the unscientific tales of supernatural spiritualism. Suchefforts are vain. 

Only by facing the facts with all their consequences, whatever thesemay be and whatever they may involve for the proudest aspirations ofmankind--only thus can truth be attained. And lest any should say thatwe preach an unrelieved pessimism, let us remind such that Knowledge isnot after all the source of Life, that another category and a differentprinciple--that, namely, which we indicate under the termLove-divine--must have generated the potent current of Life, and that noone should close the door against the hopes of the human Intelligenceuntil he has discovered what are the limits imposed upon what PerfectLove can do. 

The question still remains whether mankind will be equal to the effortrequired to assimilate the essential truth. They very nearly failed toassimilate the Copernican cosmogony. For sixteen hundred years after itwas first offered to mankind the race preferred to grope in the darknessand confinement of a false conception. 

If they succeed in accomplishing the reception of the new truth, unheard-of progress may be looked for. If they fail, civilisation mustdisappear and humanity decline. There is no middle course. As Baconremarked, in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only to God andangels to be lookers-on. 

We know how stubbornly the Ptolemaic cosmogony still clings to ourconceptions, how largely it still dominates--or till recently diddominate--the religious cosmography of the most civilised peoples. 

In Philosophy our leading teachers seem as yet to have a very feebleappreciation of the new conditions. They turn greedily to the eloquentpages of _L'Evolution créatrice_, but however earnestly they search theycannot find there any definite solution of the difficulties of theage-old problem. They wander wearily through the mazes of psychologicaldetail or wage almost childish logomachies over the interpretation ofeach other's essays. Philosophical magazines are filled with articleswhich reflect this state of the philosophic mind. Philosophicalcongresses meet and argue and go home; Gifford lecturers prelect; yet sofar as can be seen there is little sign that the key has been grasped. The great fact remains obscured amidst a mass of words. 

The elucidation of the problem of Knowledge demands certain improvementsin our philosophic terminology. Language as a rule is a very unerringphilosopher, and words shaped and polished by long usage generallyexpress, more truly than those who use them realise, the essentialreality of things. Yet these long-enduring errors of the ages which wehave been discussing here have left their impress too on the terminologyof Metaphysics. 

Thought and Action are in common speech contrasted, and the distinctionexpresses an essential truth. But when we seek to say further that bothof these are Activities, we are stating another truth in terms which arehardly consistent with the previously contrasted distinction. It mightbe better if Action and Active could be applied generally to both and ifthe term _exertion_ could be substituted for Action in describing theforms of activity which we denominate _motor_. To that suggestion, however, there are also serious objections. The words derived from _ago_have historically a special application to the exertional and dynamic. We leave the question to our readers as one of which it is ofconsiderable importance to find a satisfactory solution. 

In the foregoing pages our object has been to illustrate the erroneousconceptions by which the theory of human cognition has been obscured andto explain briefly what we conceive to be the true solution. Theargument in support of the doctrine here explained has been more fullypresented by the present writer in an essay entitled _The DynamicFoundation of Knowledge_, to which the reader who desires to study thequestion further must now be referred. 

FOOTNOTES:

[60:1] Κόσμον τόνδε τὸν αὐτὸν ἀπάντων οὔτε τις Θεῶν οὔτε ἀνθρώπωνἐποίησε, ἀλλ' ἧν αἰεὶ καὶ ἔστι καὶ ἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον ἁπτόμενον μέτρακαὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα. Quoted by Clement of Alexandria, etc. (_TheFirst Philosophers of Greece_, by A. Fairbanks, p. 28. )

[61:1] "La subdivision do la matière en corps isolés est relative ànotre perception" (_Evolution créatrice_, p. 13). 

[69:1] For a clear brief summary of the theory the reader may bereferred to a little work by Sir William Ramsay, F. R. S. , entitled_Elements and Electrons_, pp. 8-15. 

IV

THE DOCTRINE OF ENERGY[81:1]

The problem of Metaphysics--the nature of Reality--still presses for asolution. Agnosticism is but a cautious idealism--a timid phenomenalism. That philosophy, however named, which proclaims that the experience oflife is nothing more than a vain show, a pantomime of sensationsdistinguished only from ideas by their greater intensity anddistinctness, is not only a confession of failure. It is a denial offact. 

To know the nature of the Absolute as such, to present the Absolute tofinite minds as it must be presented, if that be possible, to theAbsolute itself, must ever remain impossible to man. But it is equallytrue that to attempt such a task has never been the urgent mission ofPhilosophy. The distinction between the Ideal and the Real, between theconceptual and the perceptual, is quite certainly and incessantlyrecognised. Agnosticism can neither deny the fact successfully, norsolve the speculative difficulties which its recognition raises up. TheReal and the Ideal, essentially distinct yet mockingly similar, for everblend and intermingle in the composite experience of life. Truly todiscriminate and unravel these, --validly to separate the Ideal elementwhich impregnates that Reality which we are for ever compelled topostulate and recognise, still remains the great problem ofPhilosophy--humbler perhaps and more practical, but not less profoundthan any vain attempt to discover to finite conception the Absolute asit is in itself. Therefore it is that the efforts of negative andagnostic criticism to dispense with the recognition of Reality as anecessary postulate of our activity are foredoomed to failure. Theyleave us not a solitude which we might pretend to be peace, but aseething sea of troubles urgently demanding a new attempt to reveal theunity which must underlie the infinite diversity of experience. 

Such, indeed, seems to us the present position of Metaphysics; and, whatis more important, it appears to react with increasing force upon thetheories and investigations of Science. 

The problem of Reality is thus at present not without a special andincreasing interest for the students of Physical Science. Until latelythey have been taught and have always maintained that Matter is thedirect object of sense-perception. No doubt it is long since Philosophyhas urged that our conceptions of the external world are a mentallyconstructed system. But this doctrine has made but little impressionupon the students of Natural Science. The objective origin of oursensations and the apparently objective reality also of the intelligiblequalities and operative laws of the external world are too stronglyimpressed upon their minds. Idealism and Transcendentalism have carriedno conviction to them. Still, the difficulties of common sense havecontinued to grow. Recent developments of scientific theory haveincreased the urgency of the problem, but they seem to us also tosuggest a solution the beneficial results of which affect the whole ofMetaphysics. 

We refer to the doctrine of Energy, which occupies now as great a placein the physical sciences as the doctrine of Evolution does in thezoological sciences. 

Natural philosophers have for some time taught that there are two RealThings in the physical universe--Matter and Energy. It seems a verystriking theory. Has it received the attention it deserves from thestudent of Metaphysics? We are convinced that it has not: and the reasonhe most frequently gives for this neglect is that, being a purelyscientific doctrine, it does not come within his sphere. Science, we aretold, deals with the phenomenal world internally considered; Philosophywith the relations of the phenomenal world to Reality, and with thenature of the transcendental elements in our Knowledge. 

This may be generally true. Nevertheless, Philosophy and Science havesurely concepts in common. They both refer to the same thing when theyspeak of Space; we presume also when they speak of Matter. Indeed, Philosophy analyses the conceptions involved not only in scientificreasoning, but in the most common and ordinary mental processes. Itanalyses them with special reference to the relations between thePhenomenal and the Real--a question which, though it always lies latent, does not in ordinary circumstances arise in urgent form. It is thereforeevident that the fundamental conceptions of Science _do_ fall within thepurview of Philosophy. 

The study of Physics _can_ be carried on practically as a study ofphenomena--of Heat, Colours, Sounds, Forces, etc. , all of which arekinds of phenomena--without the expression of any dogmatic andformulated opinion as to their relation with Reality. Physics can speakof mass and weight and avoid all reference to Matter; but there alwaysis, in scientific reasoning, an implicit reference to Reality, and itfacilitates, therefore, the expression of scientific reasoning, when theaccount of a physical process is stated with reference to a supposedreality, such as Matter. And in making such reference Science _is_thinking of the thing-in-itself. It _is_ a reference beyond phenomena. 

Heat, Light, Sound, Force, are names of classes of phenomena, and thegreat discovery of Physics during the nineteenth century has been thatthese are all transformable into each other, and bear definite numericalrelations to each other in proportion to which such transformations takeplace. Science availing itself of this discovery, unifies its conceptionof Nature and gives expression to the doctrine of theinter-transmutability of the various classes of physical phenomena bypostulating an entity called Energy, and regarding the various classesof phenomena as transmutations which this entity undergoes. But Sciencehas been reluctant to recognise that it is now entitled to dispense withthe postulation of Matter. The theory, as announced by the leading menof science, has therefore been to the effect that there exist in thephysical universe _two_ real things--Matter and Energy--in place of oneonly, as commonly supposed for so long. 

Now we maintain, on the contrary, that such a statement of physicaltheory is erroneous and redundant; that Science is not obliged topostulate _two_ such entities; that the concept of Energy supplies allher requirements; and that the employment of that conception obviatesthe very serious contradictions which are involved in any assumption ofa real entity of the nature of Matter as ordinarily understood--aconception of which the very description involves difficulties whichhave perplexed thinking men for more than two centuries. 

Our argument on this point involves consideration of the place occupiedby Energy in a potential form. 

Whilst the transformability of Heat, Light, Sound, and other physicalphenomena in definite numerical ratios has led to their being allregarded as actual manifestations of transmutations proceeding in onereal thing, occasionally there is a seeming break in the catena; nophenomenon can be detected into which the heat or light or otherimmediately preceding manifestation has been transformed; but, later on, the co-relative reappears, and by an argument as strong as that whichasserts the continuous identity of an intelligence before, during, andafter a temporary suspension of consciousness, the student of Physicsmaintains the continued existence _in posse_, if not _in esse_, of theEnergy which by appropriate action he can again reveal in an active orkinetic manifestation. Hence arises the conception of potential Energy. The Energy to which we attribute the force of cohesion which anyparticular body can on occasion manifest, we believe to existpotentially whilst that body continues unacted upon. Our belief isconfirmed by our experience of the certainty with which, on therecurrence of the given conditions, the force always again manifestsitself. In like manner the potential Energy to which we attribute theForce of Gravitation we believe to exist at all times, even when notkinetically active. Indeed, it only manifests itself when atransmutation is taking place into some other form of Energy. Now it isthe universal association of these two forms of potential Energy withthe common and fundamental data of our sense-experience that hassuggested the construction in our minds of the conception of Matter, andfurnished us with the ideas of solidity, impenetrability, and weightwhich constitute its groundwork. 

Our view, therefore, is that the concept of materiality can, in the wayjust indicated, be in all cases analysed into, and derived from, theconception of Energy; and that Science, if consistent, cannot postulatethe reality of Matter as well. Potential Energy adequately supplies thedemand for a real substratum of which phenomena are the manifestation. 

The whole question is very well worth the attention, not only ofscientific students but of metaphysicians. The inquiry will distinctlygain if it receive the auxiliary attention of those who have studied theprocess by which we form our mental conceptions, and whilst the studentsof Physics deserve the honours of discovery, they cannot safely dispensewith such assistance, for which the present confused and inconsistentstate of the fundamental definitions of Physical Science most urgentlycalls. There is here a neglected but very interesting field for themetaphysician's efforts. 

Recent scientific writings contain enough to show us that men of scienceare already beginning to recognise not only the inconsistency of thetheory of two real things, but the dominating significance of theconception of Energy, and are gradually coming to claim for theconception of Matter little more than recognition as the vehicle ofenergetic transmutation. Let us then for the moment accept the positionthat Science--ridding itself of redundant theory--postulates Energy asthe real thing-in-itself, in terms of which it frames its statement ofphysical phenomena, and let us examine briefly the effects which theacceptance of this new postulate is likely to have on philosophicspeculation. 

All my Presentment, all the content of my sense-experience, according tothis theory, I attribute to a multifarious continuous series oftransmutations constantly proceeding in some portion of the system ofEnergy which constitutes the real substratum of phenomena. I study, measure, and classify the different species of these transmutations; Iassociate particular sensations and classes of sensations withparticular transmutations, and I thence infer the existence _in posse_or _in esse_ of more or less Energy in some particular form transmutingitself according to some one or other definite physical law. I inferalso the existence of various supplies of potential Energy constantlyavailable, and of other intelligent agents like myself. 

I associate every such intelligent agent with a particular series orgroup of sense-experiences, and further I assume that the world at hisPresentment, consists for him in a similar series of transmutationscontinuously going on in that portion of the energetic system which Ibelieve in a similar way to constitute such person's bodily organism. Thus by the same process of reasoning by which I am led to believe thatmy own Presentment consists in the energetic transmutations proceedingin my organism, I explain the universality of the experience of allintelligent agents. In my own case, by that union of consciousness withphysical energy which accompanies the manifestation of life, I amimmediately related with that portion of the energetic system which isthe real substratum of my organism, and am made conscious of the seriesof transmutations occurring at that particular point in it which isrepresented by my sensory system. In the case of others, from certain ofthe transmutations occurring in my Presentment, I am led to infer theexistence of other similar microcosmic systems in the energeticmacrocosm of the physical universe. 

This is all very well as a theory, but if all I know is the series oftransmutations occurring in the portion of the system of Energy relateddirectly to my intelligence, how did I ever learn to infer from thesetransmutations the existence of that Energy underlying them, and stillmore of the whole energetic system extending far beyond my organism? Howdo I deduce from transmutations proceeding in the portion of theenergetic system which constitutes the real substratum of my organismthe existence, not only of that substratum itself, but of other portionsof the system similarly related to other intelligences, and of theenergetic system as a whole? How do I get beyond my Presentment? Howpass from Ideality to Existence?

I answer that I never could by any chance or possibility have got beyondit or got any suggestion of the Reality had I been merely related to myPresentment as a passive and percipient subject. In point of fact, however, I am in relation with the energetic system not merely orprimarily as an Intelligence percipient of the transmutations proceedingin it at a particular point, but also as a Will initiative to someextent of such transmutations and capable of influencing and directingthe physical process. Life necessarily involves a process of energetictransmutation constantly proceeding at that portion of the system ofEnergy which constitutes my organism, and I am there related as Willwith a larger system which embraces the part in which intelligence isdeveloped. 

Fundamentally, life manifests itself in all grades of the zoologichierarchy as a union of Volition (or what appears in action as Volition)with some particular point in the universe of physical Energy, the unionconstituting what we call a living organism. 

Despite its profound importance to us personally and to our race, weshould not forget that, objectively considered, the brain in man and thehigher animals is merely a special organ highly developed by use, asthe trunk is in the elephant, the middle phalanx in the horse, or wingsin the bird. Intelligence is hardly to any extent a necessity of thevital union of the Will with the energetic system. It is not at alldeveloped in the vegetal kingdom, hardly at all in some branches of theanimal, and there may conceivably be an infinite number of other"kingdoms" in which it may be either undeveloped, or very differentlydeveloped, or superseded by some other manifestation by us unimaginable. Its development indeed seems to be concurrent with the development of alocomotive faculty--a striking confirmation of the theory that it is inour activity that we derive the suggestions which call forth theexercise of the Understanding and transform sensation into perception. 

It is only with a comparative fraction of the organism that I am relatedas a passively percipient intelligence. I am directly or indirectlyrelated as Will, as an originative cause of activity, with a largerportion of my organism, many parts of which are quite distinct from thecognitive portion. Now it is from my relation as Will with Energy otherthan and beyond the energetic transmutations which constitute myPresentment that I discover the energetic system of Nature, as a realthing--beyond, underlying, and by its transmutations constitutive of myPresentment. Many of the transmutations which occur in my Presentment Irecognise as attributable to my own volitional activity operating uponmy energetic organism, and _in my own activity there is thus suggestedto me a source of phenomena lying beyond these phenomena themselves_. Atransmutation initiated in my brain is a pure idea. The key whichsuggests to me the real world is the occurrence of transmutationsascribable to my activity operating beyond the sphere which constitutesmy Presentment. 

It is in this way that I originally discover the real energeticsubstratum to the phenomenal world of my Presentment. I learn from thetransmutations to infer the agency and operation of the underlyingenergy, and thus gradually construct my whole systematic conception ofthe real world in which I live and move and have my being. 

This view of my activity and of the consequences of my relation as Willto the energetic system represented by my organism, including theportion thereof related to my intelligence, supplies us therefore with akey to the inevitable reference of thoughts to things. 

I distinguish in my active experience a clear difference between wishingand willing, and further between willing and effective action. MyPower--the Energy related to my Will--the exertion of which isnecessary to translate Volition into an overt result--is a limited andquantifiable thing, but that such a hidden energetic medium orsubstratum underlies all phenomena is evident from the fact that I donot will directly the appearance of any given phenomenon. I may wishthat. But when the Volition is reached and the wish transformed intoovert exertion I find myself involved in the multifarious processes ofan energetic system which I may so far influence, but which isnevertheless in many ways constantly going on irrespective of myVolition. I may wish to avoid pain and may will certain exertions withthat view, but the consequences may be the reverse of what I wished. This shows that the Volition operates immediately not on the sensationbut on the energetic system. 

In all cases between Volition and overt result there seems to be erectedand constantly maintained around me a vast energetic system, a part butonly a small part of which, namely the Energy of my organism, can beinfluenced directly by my Will, whilst, even in immediate relation withthat part, transmutations beyond the reach of my Will are constantlygoing on. Indeed, what fundamentally distinguishes Volition from Desireis its relation to the energetic system. 

The doctrine of Energy therefore puts in a new and clearer light thewhole theory of Causation. 

It is common for philosophers to talk of invariable sequence as thecriterion of Causality. But, in fact, that is quite fallacious. No oneever regards a phenomenon as the cause of another phenomenon. We ascribeCausality to the energetic transmutation which in some form or other weinevitably believe to accompany the appearance of every phenomenon. Wenever postulate a causal relation between day and night--the mostnotable case of invariable sequence. When we say the fire warms theroom, or the horse draws the cart, or the sun ripens the corn, it is theEnergy which we rightly or wrongly associate with the visual sensationreferred to in the words "fire" and "horse" and "sun" of which we arethinking, and by no means of these visual sensations themselves. As hasbeen well said, we never suppose that the leading carriage of the traindraws those behind it, although their relation of sequence is quite asclose to it as to the engine. 

True, it is and must be from and by phenomena only that I infer andmeasure the transmutations of Energy, but the transmutations measuredare operations of the real thing-in-itself postulated by Science. Theexistence of such Energy is suggested to me primarily in my experienceof my own activity in which I recognise my power of doing work--aquantifiable and measurable thing, homogeneous with the Energy inrespect of which Science states the relations and conditions of allphysical phenomena. My most incessant mental act is that by which, onthe analogy of my own active experience, I refer all phenomena to theunderlying energetic system. This reference it is which transformssensation into perception; and the constant affirmation of thisreference is the great function of the synthetic mental activity of theunderstanding, and is at once the origin and explanation of thatimperative mental tendency which metaphysicians call the law ofCausality. 

How, then, does this doctrine affect the theory of the nature of Space?

If it be true that the world as my Presentment consists in thetransmutations occurring in that particular part of the energetic systemwhich constitutes the real substratum of the brain, then phenomena as awhole must arise in transmutation, in a process of Becoming rather thanin a state of Being, and Space must be the content, the condition, inwhich that process proceeds. The laws of Space, therefore, are laws, soto speak, of motion, not of position. The most absolutely still andmotionless visual presentation is really a series of constanttransmutations of Energy and the form of Space is constituted by thelaws of transmutation, which are thus at once the necessary conditionsof my perception and the universal conditions of all sense-perception. Space, therefore, does not contain the real thing which sustains thephenomenal world any more than it does the reality which underlies myconscious self. It is the universal condition of the transmutationswhich constitute phenomena; and it therefore "contains" all thesephenomena, including my body as phenomenon and only as phenomenon. Itsform is discovered by my organic motor activity, and in representingthis activity the mind constructs its concepts of Space and Extension. 

This view of the nature of Space, by relating its forms and laws withthe objective, and a-logical thing-in-itself in virtue of thetransmutations of which our sense-experience occurs, relieves an obviousdifficulty which must always have been felt in accepting withoutqualification the purely Kantian view which regarded it as a categoryimposed by the Intelligence upon the otherwise unknowable world ofsense. 

The most ardent assertors of the ideality of Space have hithertoapparently had difficulty in avoiding the tendency to conceive it as thepersistent all-embracing objective content of the thing-in-itself, notmerely of the phenomenon, although the latter only might enter intoKnowledge. The doctrine, however, which presents our conception of Spaceas discovered in our activity amid resistant transmutation-processes notonly establishes its ideality but at the same time explains the relationwhich its form nevertheless bears to the objective material laws of thesensible presentation. It liberates the mind from the oppressivenecessity of regarding Space as still somehow objectively extending andcontaining the real world. It also relieves an obvious difficulty whichconfronts the Philosophy of Schopenhauer in locating thosetranscendental forms of the phenomenon which are imposed _a priori_ uponthe presentation, and yet are not to be found in the pure Volition. 

Of course, it must never be forgotten that my whole sentient experienceconsists primarily of the series of energetic transmutations occurringat that part of the energetic system which is in immediate vitalrelation with my consciousness. It is my experience of active exertion, of moving, speaking, etc. , which gives a suggestion of the realenergetic world. The transmutations of the real Energy of the worldbeyond my organism never enter my Consciousness. Transmutations arisingbeyond my body only enter the presentation by influencing the cerebralprocess. The luminous undulation and the sound-wave must both producetransmutation of the cerebral Energy in order to affect Consciousness. Yet the various characters of the transmitted impulses aredistinguishable in the resultant cerebral transmutations. Thus I feelsensations of hardness, roughness, pain, colour, sound, etc. It is by aprocess of mental construction that I associate these with the forms ofmy exertional activity, and thus frame my conceptions of real bodies inthe world around me--those which I more directly associate with theEnergy subject to my Volition being conceived as representing my body. For reasons of convenience, I refer those conceptions chiefly to theco-ordinated visual presentation, and thus build up my conception of theextended world of material things. Science is possible because alltransmutations of Energy take place according to definite numerical lawsand ratios. The whole work of Science is to explain every phenomenon interms of its definite transmutation of Energy. These definite numericallaws and processes are characteristic of all Energy transmutation, andthus regulate the experience of every intelligent being. It is in virtueof these that our separate systems of knowledge correspond, and that weare thus presented each with corresponding aspects of one outer world. The laws which regulate the cerebral changes that accompanysense-presentation are for me the necessary _a priori_ laws ofperception. It is because these laws operate in common in all brainsthat community of intercourse is possible amongst mankind. It is becauseof the further fact that the whole of the transmutations of Energy whichconstitute physical phenomena compose a numerically inter-related andregulated system that Science and rational knowledge are possible to theintellect of man. Our knowledge is what we are obliged to think andassert regarding experience; but the universality of experience is notexplained merely by the common nature and general laws of Intelligence, but depends also on the generality of the laws under which thetransmutations of Energy proceed. 

We are now, therefore, by the aid of the doctrine of Energy, better ablethan before to distinguish accurately between the Ideal and the Real ascontrasted elements in our experience. 

My Presentment as a whole consists in the transmutation-processes--inthe sensations, feelings, perceptions, images, ideas--in short, in allthat is going on at the point where (I necessarily express myself interms of spatial relations, though in this connection these arefigurative) my sentience and intelligence are developed. 

My whole Presentment is, therefore, in one sense subjective, or, as somewould say, ideal. For me, my Presentment is the impression produced on, the condition established in, my Consciousness in virtue of what isgoing on at this so-called point of contact. 

What we mean, therefore, by the subjectivity or ideality of thePresentment is the aspect of energetic transmutations when viewed asaffecting my Consciousness in contrast with their obverse aspect whenviewed as transmutations in the objective system. As my Presentment, they are all subjective or ideal, and it is in this reference thatBerkeley and Hume, for instance, speak of ideas of sense, such as thecolour blue, the heat of the fire, the pain of a blow. These, constituting the bulk of the Presentment, they distinguish from whatBerkeley called ideas of the imagination--those stimulated ororiginated, or, as he said, "excited, " by the intelligence itself. Whilst he contended that both classes are ideal or subjective, inrespect that they are constituents of the Presentment, the latter havean additional title to subjectivity in respect of their origin, andconstitute what are called "ideas" when the word is used incontra-distinction to "sensations"--such pure ideas occurring inresponse to a subjective impulse. 

On the other hand, there is a sense in which the Presentment is, if notreal, at least actual and objective. 

So far as we know, Intelligence never develops except in conjunctionwith an organism--that is, in vital relation with physical Energy. MyPresentment is constituted by the occurrence and depends upon thecontinuance of the transmutations or operations proceeding at therelated point in the energetic system. Even pure ideas, thoughsubjective not only in regard to aspect but in regard to their origin, are objective in respect that they also consist in an energetictransmutation. 

Herein lies the germ of truth to be discovered even in the unintelligentdogmatism of those philosophers who assert the absolute Reality of myPresentment, as such--not merely its actuality. It is comparativelyseldom, however, either in Science or Philosophy, that we meet a thinkerprepared to go as far as that. Most take refuge in a distinction betweenprimary and secondary qualities of bodies, classing my sensations asnon-resembling secondary qualities, which they admit cannot be conceivedto exist without the mind in the form in which they make up myPresentment, but reserving five or six primary qualities--solidity, extension, figure, motion, rest--which they conceive to existindependently, just as they enter into my Presentment. In point of fact, however, these so-called primary qualities are not the names ofintuitions, but are abstractions or generalisations of the most generaland necessary elements of my active Experience by reference to which Imentally construct my world. The transmutations of Energy are not anever-repeated accidental kaleidoscope. They proceed according toconstant, definite, measurable laws, and though subordinate variationsare infinite and make up the details of my Presentment, the general lawsand conditions according to which all Energy transmutes are definite, and constitute the general features or qualities of my Experience, andthese are the so-called primary qualities of bodies regarded in thelight of the doctrine of Energy. 

The primary quality of extension, in particular, is a conceptionresulting from the association of my visual Presentment with my power ofactive exertion, and the delusive tendency to regard this quality as insome sense primarily and fundamentally real is due to the unconsciousrecognition of the fact that it is in virtue of my power, or associationas an agent with the energetic system, that I derive a suggestion of thereal world beyond the phenomena which constitute my experience. 

I cannot exist without some development of activity. Hence are derivedmy conceptions of free space and of resistance between bodies. Myprimary sensations are the sensations of touch, and the primary impulseof thought is to relate these with my active exertions. When sight isfirst restored to the blind the first impulse is to regard the newsensation as a form of touch. Its intellectual suggestiveness is adevelopment. The system or stream of transmutations in which myvolitional activity principally takes part is that represented by theoperation of the forces of Gravitation and Cohesion; the system whichinfluences my visual sensations is a quite different series. The changesin this latter series, by their greater rapidity, enable me toanticipate the other series, and for this and other reasons I employthese sensations to signalise and symbolise the transmutationsproceeding in the series with which I am more immediately related as anactive and "willing" agent. All transmutations, if they result insensations, must do so by producing changes in the Energy of myorganism, and must therefore be conditioned by the general laws whichregulate the changes which occur there, or, in other words, must becontained within a self-consistent spatial condition; but thedifferences in the characters of visual Space, as it is called, and thespatial content of my activity, reflect the differences in the series ofenergetic transmutations with which they are respectively connected. 

We see more clearly, therefore, with the aid of the doctrine of Energy, the import of the theory of transcendental æsthetic enunciated by Kant, who first pointed out that there are elements, and those the mostnecessary and universal, in the sense-presentation which bear thecharacter of ideality as fully as the most subjective efforts of ourideative activity. More particularly do we illustrate the ideality ofSpace as a cognition precedent to experience. It is because general lawsconstantly operative regulate the transmutations which constitute theindividual's Presentment that it is possible for him to abstract fromand generalise the data of sense; and it is because the subjectiveprocess of Ideation, by which we mean our representative mental activityin its widest sense, consists also in transmutations under the samegeneral laws of the same portion of the energetic organism, that it ispossible to frame general ideas. These general laws of organictransmutation are the _a priori_ conditions of the necessarydetermination in time of all existences in the world of phenomena. 

The form, therefore, of the phenomenon, in the language of Kant, isconstituted by the transmutations of the Energy immediately related toconsciousness; the matter of the phenomenon is constituted by thevarieties produced in these by the transmitted transmutations from theEnergy beyond--just as the musician may produce a constant variety ofharmonies upon his instrument, but all must be conditioned by therelations fixed and established between the notes of which theinstrument is composed. Transmutations of the cerebral Energy may bestimulated not only from without, but by subjective impulse from within;but in either case the laws of these transmutations are the necessaryform of experience, and it is the possibility of transmutation upon aninternal and subjective impulse which makes possible the formation ofsynthetical judgments _a priori_. It is as if the organ were not onlyresponsive to impressions upon its keyboard from without, but were alsoautomotive and could originate harmonies in its own notes; and as if, moreover, it were endowed with consciousness so as to receive anintuition of both classes of music. The former would correspond tosensations, the latter to ideas; and we might imagine such an instrumentby presenting to itself its own system of notes, contriving thus toframe _a priori_ a synthetical system of these general musical lawswhich would constitute the necessary and universal form of its wholemusical experience. To complete the perhaps fantastic analogy we mustimagine the world to be one co-ordinated musical system, and ourinstrument to be endowed with the power of playing upon the otherkeyboards; of thence deriving the suggestion of the distinction betweenthe internal and external impulses which respectively awakened harmonieswithin itself; and lastly, of thus at length conceiving in the spirit ofscience that the necessary and universal laws which it recognised as themost subjective and fundamental conditions of its own operation, at thesame time regulated the activity of the entire musical universe. 

How natural it would be for such an intelligent musical instrument, ifunhappily endowed with common sense, to believe and assert that the realsubstance of the universe consisted solely of sounds. Yet how evidentwould it be to us from our standpoint of more absolute knowledge thatthe whole orchestra of sounds, although actual and quite distinct fromconsciousness, was still merely phenomenal, and yet withal, in its everyexpression, revealed the laws and structure of reality--of the system ofthings in themselves--a system the reality of which was dissimilar tothose appearances, though all its laws and structure could be studiedand derived from them. 

Berkeley, therefore, erred seriously when he described the idea as afainter sensation. Faint subjective reproductions of our sensations, asof blue, green, or the like, constitute a very insignificant element inour mental furniture. We seldom pursue so far into detail the ideativeeffort. Severely and effectively as Berkeley criticised Locke's accountof abstract ideas, the fact remains that abstraction is a primaryfeature of our whole conceptual system; and the abstractable elements ofthe sensible presentation being the necessary constituents of allideative representation are properly denominated ideal. The one elementof particularity which every idea lacks is the reference to thetransmitted transmutation to which the sensible phenomenon owes itsorigin. We derive such reference to the external solely from theobstructions which our free activity encounters and without which wecould receive no suggestion of the non-ego, and in particular nosuggestion of the dynamic element which fundamentally distinguishesthings from thoughts. The empirical content of experience--the so-calledsecondary qualities of bodies--are often called in their subjectiveaspect "ideal" because the mental impression is obviously verydifferent from the transmutation objectively regarded. But this is toconfound the ideal with the subjective, which latter term is thatproperly applicable both to the sensible impression and to purely mentalactivity. The primary qualities, being the general laws or forms oforganic Energy-transmutation, are in a higher sense ideal, for they arethe necessary conditions under which both sense-presentation andideative representation proceed. Whilst, therefore, as Kant maintained, they are the _a priori_ element in perception, they at the same timeconstitute the laws which regulate all Energy-transmutation within ourexperience both organic and extra-organic. 

We hold, therefore, to the Platonic doctrine that whilst, on the onehand, the sensible is only an object of thought in so far as it partakesof the intelligible, on the other hand the idea is not only a type forthe individual mind, but is partaker also of the laws which penetratethe system of things. Idealism as a Philosophy, in denying the validityof any reference of the content of the Presentment to a furtherexistence outside of the subjective experience, has induced that wideruse of the term idea which applies it to the whole actuality ofexperience in its subjective aspect. With the advance of Philosophy wemust revert to that more ancient use of the term idea which confinesits extension into the realm of the perceptual to those elements of thesensible presentation which can be reproduced by the conceptual activityof the subject, and which in asserting, for instance, the ideality ofSpace, reminds us at the same time that Ideality implies not merelysubjectivity, but the expression or representation also of some aspectof those laws which regulate the system of Reality. 

But is not common sense right, after all? Do I really mean to say thattables, chairs, houses, mountains--the whole world of my Presentment, are to be regarded as shrivelled up and located in my brain, or in theenergetic correlative of my brain? Is the whole Universe, as known to meor conceived by me, contained within a minute portion of itself--thebrain? Now Science does say something very like this, and the logicaldifficulties of the position are very pressing. But they cannot be gotover by attempting to revert to common sense, because to assert that allmy conceived Universe is immediately perceived by me as it exists, wouldseem to involve a diffusion of my intelligence throughout Space which isstill more inconceivable and self-contradictory. Even apart from thisimplication, the assumption of the Reality of the phenomenal worlddestroys itself. To assume the reality of so-called material particlesis to lay the foundation of an argument which surely leads to theconclusion that the whole world of my consciousness is produced by andconsists in motions in that certain small group of these same moleculeswhich is assumed to make up my brain. The solution is only reached whenwe discover that the error lies in forgetting that the Reality which isthe seat of my Presentment is itself unperceived, and that what Icommonly call a body and a brain are the phenomena occurring in myPresentment, and which I associate with such real substratum. The realsubstratum of my Presentment is a part of the energetic Universe, whichis constantly undergoing transmutations. Wherever such Energy is united, in an organism, with consciousness these transmutations, as affectingand perceived by such consciousness, constitute its Presentment orsense-experience; and aided by the constructive activity of thoughtexpand, as it were, subjectively into a whole world of experience, asthe electric current vibrating darkly along the narrow confines of thewire suddenly expands at the carbon point into the luminous undulationswhich light a city. 

We admit, therefore, to the full the actuality and objectivity of thesensible presentation. We only deny that it is the real thing-in-itself. The latter is not discovered by sense. My energetic organism is like awell-fitting garment; I do not feel it at all. I feel only changes ortransmutations taking place in it. Be not alarmed, therefore, for yourcommon-sense world. We leave it to you intact and actual--not deductingeven a single primary quality. Allowing fully for the extent to which, little suspected by you, it is a mentally constructed system, itselements are still actual and objective; they are modes of Reality;extension and the other primary qualities are qualities of these modes. Moreover, the Ego, I, myself, as Will, as a continuously identicintelligent agent, am not given to myself immediately in my Presentment, any more than is the real object. The existence of my Ego, of mycogitant self, is an inference which I am compelled to draw from thefacts of my mental activity. _Cogito, ergo sum. _ Similarly, my energeticorganism is the real a-logical thing-in-itself which I am compelled topostulate in order to explain my perception of physical phenomena in thelight of my physical activity; _ago, ergo possum_. 

We must not overlook the unique position in our Presentment occupied bythe visual presentation. Its universality, simultaneousness, minuteaccuracy, quantifiability, etc. , are such that it is really to thevisual Presentment that I refer all other elements in mysense-experience. I think of them with reference to it. In connectionwith it I mentally construct my world. I associate with somemodification of the visual presentation the phenomena resultant upon theenergetic activity of my own organism, and the other forces andpotential Energies which that activity reveals and suggests. It is thusthat I derive the compound idea of Body as consisting of Figure, Extension, and Solidity. The continued appearance in my visualpresentation of the grey colour which I am now seeing is to me the signof the continued persistence of that potential Energy in virtue of whichI regard it as the appearance of a solid extended stone wall. Everythingis referred to the visual presentation, and it is in reference to itthat the mind works in constructing its world. 

The whole theory of molecular action is a theory constructed inreference to the visual presentation--the reality of which, strangely, it seems to result in overthrowing. A born-blind man could never haveinvented the conception of atoms or molecules. This is well worththinking over. The visual presentation is not really fundamental; and wemust undo the inversion induced by its great convenience whereby werefer to it all the other elements of our sense-experience and conceiveof our activity and our whole actual world by reference to the visiblesign. It is in consequence of this reference to the visual that bodiesare thought of as discrete units, so that it is difficult to conceivethat the real thing in virtue of which we experience the perception of, say, a heap of stones, is truly more or less potential Energy--just asthe continuous process of thought is very different from the disparatesymbols of speech. 

I habitually refer to the visual extended image as the primary basis ofmy idea of the world, or of any particular part of the world, such as mydining-room. Why? Simply because, for the reasons already noted, thesense of sight is the sense of universal reference. In principle it isthe same habitual tendency which makes me associate every element of myworld with its appropriate name. It is different in the case of othersensations. When I am absent from Niagara I do not, in thinking of it, primarily conceive of it as a roar of sound. I think of certain motionsof mass which, if I were present, would occasion the subjectivesensations of sound. But for the habitual tendency arising from theuniversal reference to the visible I would do the same in the case ofthe visual image. All I am necessitated to think is a real event--areal, physical, dynamical transmutation--proceeding quite independentlyof my perception or presence; and if I can only manage to realise that Imust, for philosophical purposes, eliminate my reference to visual aswell as to audible or other sensations, I will understand that all I amentitled to, and all I can, without hopeless contradiction, postulate asreal thing existing independently of my perception, is a transmutationof Energy. This energy is imperceptible, unextended, unfigured, yet itis by no means a mere logical or mental necessity or associativetendency. On the contrary, it is very real. It sustains my every act. Byan imperative mental necessity I am obliged, by inference from myexperiences as an active and percipient agent, to postulate theenergetic system in which I am involved, and with one particular centrein which I am organically related. 

But we recall at this point that Science says she must still postulateMatter as the vehicle of Energy. But what does that mean except that thesubject of her studies is the sensible presentation which itselfconsists of energy transmutation in part constantly changing but withrelatively permanent and recurrent elements? These more permanentelements constitute what we call bodies. If the sensible presentationconsisted exclusively of one continuous, unchanging phenomenon, Reasonwould never be stimulated, and Personality, Cause, Power would neverhave been postulated or conceived. But the transmutation is constantly"accelerated"--incessantly fluctuates and varies. Certain of thesevariations I recognise as related to my own volitional activity, and Iam thus furnished with a key which enables me, by a sympathetic analogy, to attribute all the changes in my experience to various agents, eachrelated to the other by the intervention of this system of physicalEnergy. Some of these I can further trace to the initiative of Volitionof myself or other persons; others I can only recognise as integralparts of the vast energetic system of Nature, the stimulus of which Icannot follow further. 

The reality of Matter is said to be proved by its indestructibility; butthis characteristic can easily be resolved into (1) theindestructibility of Space and Extension which we have seen to be merelyanother name for the necessity or inevitable universality of the generallaws and conditions of Energy transmutation, and (2) theindestructibility of the Energy to the transmutations of which weattribute the forces of Cohesion and Gravitation. 

All vital activity is but a producing of changes in the stream oftransmutation. We never do, nor in the nature of things do we ever tryto, increase or diminish the quantity of the real Energy itself. Weinstinctively recognise the objective source of our physical power, andthis has led some thinkers to suppose that the indestructibility ofMatter is an _a priori_ datum of thought. But such a belief is quiteunfounded. All it amounts to is a recognition that the destruction ofMatter is _beyond our power_--a necessary consequence of the fact thatwe merely act upon the transmutation-process. Many a long contestbetween the supporters of _a priori_ and experiential knowledge can beset at rest by this view of the mediating functions of the energeticorganism. 

The reflections which we have thus briefly noted and illustrated open awide field for inquiry. The scientific doctrine of Energy would seem tobe pregnant with momentous consequences for Philosophy, and it is worthwhile for metaphysicians to devote to this subject the deepest and mostdeliberate thought. The results cannot easily be grasped by a merecursory perusal of memoranda, in which we have only sketched a fewsalient aspects of the doctrine. We deprecate unwarrantable assurance, and are fully conscious of the difficulty of adequately expressingthought on such a theme; but we have not written rashly nor withoutgood grounds for asking attention. 

Science, it seems to us, postulates in Energy an a-logical, unextended, real thing-in-itself in terms of which the phenomena of Physics can beadequately and quantifiably stated. At the same time it furnishesPhilosophy with a theory of the objectively real thing-in-itself whichsatisfied those necessities of thought by which we are constrained tointerpret our sense-experience by a constant reference to a Realitybeyond it--a necessity due to our association as Actors with an Energybeyond that which is the seat of our Presentment. Such a view avoids theincurable difficulties and contradictions involved in the theory of thereality of extended material substance, or in any theory, indeed, whichasserts the reality--as presented--of the sensible presentation. Physical Reality thus conceived is consistently thinkable as co-existentwith the thing-in-itself--be it ultimately Intelligence or Volition--ofwhich our cognitive and conative existence is a manifestation. And sucha doctrine, by explaining all phenomena as transmutations proceeding(according to the definite mathematical laws prevailing throughout thewhole Universe of Energy) at that point in the system which isorganically related to Consciousness, accounts at once for the apparentapriority and necessity of the qualities of Space, and at the same timefor their evident universality and objectivity. 

In a word, it would rather seem as if Science, unconscious of itspregnant possibilities, has not only formulated a theory whichco-ordinates and unifies the entire fabric of physical knowledge, buthas also at length furnished Philosophy with the key to that problem thesolution of which has, in the words of Schopenhauer, been the mainendeavour of philosophers for more than two centuries, namely, toseparate by a correctly drawn line of cleavage the Ideal--that whichbelongs to our knowledge as such--from the Real, that which existsindependently of us; and thus to determine the relation of each to theother. 

To us it seems not strange that Philosophy should in the end be indebtedto Science for this solution--nor should Science, in the hour of hergreatest speculative victory, object too hastily to the assistance whichthe thinker, trained to the study of the process of thought, can renderin clarifying and restating in its metaphysical aspects a theory which, if profoundly conceived, and formulated by men of science from Rumfordand Davy to Stewart, Tait, and Kelvin, was partially anticipated by themetaphysician who conceived the world as will and idea. 

We maintain, therefore, that the presentation of sense, the continuumor manifold, or what you will, consists in the transmutations of a realsubstance itself unextended and unperceived; that the laws of thesetransmutations are what constitute the geometric all-containing Space;that at a point in this real energetic system organically related to theintelligent self, the transmutations occurring there constitute theindividual's sensible experience; that his mind, by also activelyinfluencing the system at that point, can stimulate the train oftransmutations which constitute his world of ideas; that the mind candiscover itself as Will influencing transmutations in the organism whichare transmitted through a wider, larger portion of the system; and canrecognise the transmutations at the related point as influencedsometimes by its own Volition and sometimes by other agents. We seek tobring the added light of scientific theory to reconcile the conflictbetween the law and the fact, between the objects of reflection and theobjects of sense, between the world of thought and the world ofphenomena, --the problem which Plato raised and which has since been thecentral problem of Metaphysics. In doing so we present a doctrine whichnot only maintains the truth of the Ideal, and the actuality of thephenomenal, and the relative reality of both, but which proves, withall the cogency of Science, how it is that the Sensible is permeated byand made knowable only by the Ideal, by the laws of the transmutationswhich constitute actuality, and that, on the other hand, the Ideal onlyenters experience as the regulative principle of the ever-transmutingReality. 

The world consists not merely of phenomena, nor of phenomena and lawswhich regulate them. These are but transitional and imperfect aspects ofReality. "Our standard of Truth and Reality, " says a recent writer, "moves us on towards an individual with laws of its own, and to lawswhich form the vital substance of a single existence. " We approach sucha goal in the conception of Energy--the laws of whose constanttransmutations are what we call Nature. 

We must distinguish Energy as Absolute Reality from such conceptions asActivity, which is its subjective aspect, or as Force, which is reallythe rate at which Energy is, in certain cases, transformed. Dynamics, which investigates Force, is a study of the fundamental transmutationsof Energy. It postulates Energy as the Real Entity in terms of which itcan frame a satisfactory theory of dynamical phenomena. 

The metaphysical labours of the century which has elapsed since Kanthave not been altogether in vain. The deeper thinkers are pretty nearlyagreed that the Absolute is not to be identified with its appearances. How far they can bring home this view in practical form to theintelligence of man is another matter. Plato doubtless saw the truth ina sort of beatific vision, but the tide of speculation ebbed after hisdeath, and its healing waters never inundated the deserts of mediævalthought. The discursive weakness in which the speculation of thetranscendental Philosophy seems to dissipate itself makes us fear asimilar decline. Metaphysics must receive the assistance of the greatspeculative achievement of Physics. It must realise that Science canpostulate a Reality unperceived and unqualified by the conditions ofsense, but in terms of which Science can explain the whole phenomena ofthe sensible presentation in their objective aspect, --explain these astransmutations of Reality, proceeding in accordance with the generalmathematical laws under which Reality transmutes itself. 

It may be said that reason requires us to think that the Universe is aunity. Where do you embrace within Reality, in such a view of it, Intelligence, Volition, Feeling? We answer: Of course, obviouslyReality, as postulated by Physics, does not contain these. But the RealThing postulated by Physics is but one aspect of the whole, and may be, must be, merged in a higher Reality--of which phenomena, on the onehand, and Thought, Conation, Feeling on the other, are the appearances. That involves a further advance, the attainment of a higher degree ofTruth which would bridge the Dualism of Thought and Existence, of Selfand Not-self, of Spirit and Nature, and whilst, on the one hand, suchReality must fundamentally be a-logical, on the other hand Energy mayowe its energy to Spirit. 

In the dualism which we must, in experience, recognise, we notice onefundamental distinction: quantification, measurability, appear theattributes of the physical; quality, ideality, of the spiritual. Theapprehension, therefore, of the doctrine of Energy should accomplish inclarity and security the abolition of the intolerable contradictionswhich have hitherto involved the search for Reality amid itsappearances. We think it suggests the most satisfying explanation of thedistinction which separates, and the principle which relates Idealityand Externality, and should obviate the almost childish efforts oftranscendentalists to expound the relation of the Mind to a body whichis involved in, and which is yet--for the individual--distinguished, they cannot tell us how, from the whole system of Nature. 

Of course, neither Thought nor Volition, as such, can be the absoluteReality. They, like Physical Force, are but transmutations, affections, phases of Reality. Nor, again, is Energy, as a quality, a correctdescription of the Absolute, as such. The Absolute, as such, we cannotdescribe; but in studying, as Physics does, the relations of physicalphenomena and stating these in terms of Reality, it conveniently givesReality a name appropriate to its own standpoint. 

Metaphysics rightly declines to be required to study special branches ofScience. Nothing but grotesque absurdity ensues when this precaution isoverlooked. Yet Metaphysics has hitherto thought itself the better of alittle logic, and in the future it will have to grasp the scientificconception of Reality. There is nothing else for it; and, after all, itis remarkable how far the most fundamental conceptions of Metaphysicsare dependent on a physical origin. 

Surely it is of primary importance to realise the effect upon ourconceptions of Space and Extension of the doctrine of the transmutationsof Energy. Even the profoundest metaphysicians have seemingly failed toexplain how Space, Matter, and Extension are related with Reality. Youcannot ignore this difficulty by saying that these are the workingconceptions of particular branches of Physical Science. But when yourealise that physical phenomena, even the most permanent and rigid, areby scientific demonstration but transmutations of the real thing, youmay then understand that Space, Body, and Extension are but the laws andconditions of the process. As appearances, and within the realm ofphenomena, they seem still what they have always seemed. So much westill concede without diminution or obscurity; and at the same time wecan harmonise them as they could never be harmonised before withpostulated Reality. 

It is the same with Time. The facts of memory would seem to imply thatthere is no succession in the Absolute. We are always present at alltimes of our life. In recollecting a past event we are contemplating nomere image, but the actual past event itself. Our chronometry depends onthe annual motion of the Earth round the Sun. It has thus a purelyphysical basis. 

We might illustrate the application of the doctrine of Energy to everydepartment of Metaphysics. But such is not the object of the presentessay. We merely desire to indicate briefly some of the many aspects ofthe theory, and if only we have been able to suggest a line of inquiry, the primary object of this essay has been attained. 

FOOTNOTES:

[81:1] Originally printed in 1898, now revised and rewritten. 

_Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, _Edinburgh_

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

THEDYNAMIC FOUNDATIONOF KNOWLEDGE

_Crown 8vo. 330 pp. 6s. Net_

"Mr. Philip, a thinker of considerable acuteness, expounds further thedynamic theory of knowledge which he propounded in 'Matter and Energy'and the 'Doctrine of Energy. ' What we are really sensible of in theexternal world is mutation; but the consciousness of our own activitysuggests the existence of something behind phenomena. The reality whichsustains experience is found to be, in essence, power--power conceivedas an energy containing within itself the principle of its ownevolution; an energy constantly transmuting itself, and in itstransmutations furnishing the entire presentation of sense. Theuniversal application of this concept unifies science or the knowledgeof nature; and the dynamic theory is applied by Mr. Philip to life, economics, and education. " _Times. _

"Well written, and contains much sound analysis of perception and thelike, with much that is debatable but suggestive andstimulating. "--_Nature. _

"The argument is conducted with great ability and thoroughness, and thewriter reveals a most accurate acquaintance with the results of bothscience and philosophy. "--_Glasgow Herald. _

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER, & CO. , LTD. BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-74 CARTER LANE, LONDON, E. C.