and Newton owed its origin and its success to the abandonment of this
vicious principle. So far as Nature was concerned, the Mind was regarded
as a _tabula rasa_, and the physician set himself to ascertain the laws
of nature not by reflection upon his own mental processes or
requirements, but by experiment with and observation of natural
processes themselves. The result has been the establishment of modern
science--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 synthese scolastique du moyen age, elle qui
cependant a concilie d'une facon admirable l'_actuel_ et le
_potentiel_ dans l'explication de la nature des choses. Il
s'est mepris aussi sur les caracteres de la methode
scolastique de connaitre la constitution intime du monde
experimental; il croit cette methode 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 mediaevalism 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 of
Science.
The external world of our Experience seems to be composed of sensible
impressions. The ever present visual panorama combined with the constant
occurrence of other sensations suggests that Nature is, as has so often
been asserted, simply another name for the sensible presentation. A
truer view of Nature was adumbrated by Aristotle when he formulated the
theory of an Energy ever generative of the sensible. If the founders of
Science did not fully grasp the Aristotelian conception, it is at least
certain that they looked upon Nature not merely as a sensible
presentation but as a process--a dynamic operation. It was to the study
of these operations, to the measurement of the natural forces or normal
categories of physical action that Galileo and Newton devoted
themselves. The true estimate of a moving force may indeed be said to
have been their first great problem, just as the law of universal
gravitation was their grandest generalisation.
It was to this sure instinct that the founders of Science owed their
success. Had they devoted themselves to the mere study of sensations--of
blue things and green things, of hard things and soft things, of loud
things and silent things--Science as an efficient and co-ordinated
system would never have come into being.
* * * * *
Having struck the right path, they moved rapidly along it, leaving the
Schoolmen and Philosophers behind them, suspicious, hostile, and amazed.
But Philosophy did not remain altogether negative. The new movement
extended itself to Metaphysics, and under the leadership of Descartes a
resolute effort was made to reform Philosophy on sympathetic lines.
It was in the true spirit of Socrates that Descartes advanced his famous
method of Doubt. The whole fabric of beliefs and rational principles was
to be subjected to a re-examination, and Descartes found himself on
bedrock when he touched his famous _Cogito, ergo sum._ The simple fact
or act of Doubt implied the Activity--the Reality therefore--of the
Doubter. But the cogitant subject was reduced very much to the condition
of a _tabula rasa_, and when Descartes proceeded to fill up the blank
with a rediscovery on more scientific lines of the essentials of
Cognition he found his basal feature in Extension. Tridimensional Space
seemed the simple elementary framework of our Knowledge of Nature.
The method of Descartes was further extended by the English philosopher
Locke. Those qualities which formed the elements of Knowledge were
described by him as the primary qualities of body; the sensible
presentation comprised also the secondary qualities which seemed to be
in 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 only
just to Locke to point out that, when examined in detail, his sensible
ideas are seen to be not mere qualifications of sensation, but rather
the elementary characters of Nature viewed as a dynamic process and
discovered by our Activity. Yet the ambiguous term _sensible ideas_
unfortunately led to their being regarded as ideas derived, not from our
action in any form, but from pure sensation alone.
This extraordinary error was intensified in the speculation of Berkeley
and Hume. Experience with them appeared to consist solely of a
succession 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 too
universal to be capable even of the fiction that it was credible.
Berkeley, it is true, endeavoured to save the situation by postulating
the incessant and immediate intervention of the Deity as the sustainer
of the sensible panorama. This purely arbitrary and fictitious expedient
was entirely rejected by Hume, who with fearless honesty carried to its
ultimate results the direct consequences of the doctrine and then
complacently left human Knowledge to take care of itself.
* * * * *
A masterly protest against the position of Hume was made by his
countryman Reid, who in his _Inquiry into the Human Mind_ very clearly
pointed out the fundamental difference between the sensible
accompaniments or constituents of our Experience and the real and
independently existent substratum by which that Experience is sustained
and organised. His argument, though it attracted considerable attention,
did not, however, affect as deeply as might have been expected the
future of philosophic speculation, probably because he offered no new
clue or key whereby to detect the origin and account for the presence in
our Experience of those enduring and substantial elements or forms by
which it is sustained, but on the contrary left their recognition to
what he rather vaguely described as common sense.
* * * * *
Much more influential was the elaborate answer of Kant, which has
profoundly affected the course of Metaphysics since its publication.
Reverting in principle to the platonic method, Kant again sought the
enduring elements, the fundamentals of Science, in the constitution of
the cognitive faculty itself. But very differently from Plato he
discovered these in the categories or essential forms of intellective
action,--the category of causality and dependence and the so-called
forms of the transcendental aesthetic--Time and Space. Under these
categories the indefinite data of sensation were thought to be organised
into a cognisable system.
A rapid advance of speculation along the lines signalised by Kant took
place after his work was published, and for many years this movement was
regarded by a large part of the speculative world as the most hopeful
and progressive of philosophic efforts, and by its own votaries as
placing them in a position of superiority to all other schools of
thought. The thoroughness of their studies and introspective methods to
some extent justified, or at least excused the arrogance of their
pretensions.
But it is to-day almost unnecessary even to criticise this Philosophy.
From the first it was foredoomed to failure, and had no prospect of
succeeding where Plato--equipped with armour from the same forge--had
already failed.
* * * * *
Kantianism like Platonism failed because it still left the sensible
unaccounted for. Not only did it fail to tell us whence came these
sensations which, however transitory and unreal, constantly saluted our
consciousness and largely constituted our Experience; it failed also to
show us how they could be brought into relation with the faculty of
Knowledge.
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 beyond
our own subjective states, or how we ever came to think that there was a
World outside of the individual consciousness, by the categories of
which, according to them, our cognitions of such a World were called
into being. For if Reality were unknowable except by and through the
categories, then our Knowledge of Reality was the creature of our own
mental activity, and we must still remain unable to understand why we
should suppose that we had got beyond ourselves.
These defects of Kantianism were early recognised by Schopenhauer, who
also appears to have realised that what was wanted was another and a new
key to unlock the gateway of Knowledge.
Knowledge was in essence an affirmation or series of affirmations about
a real World distinct from the Knower. It was surely now obvious that
the warrant for such affirmations and the source of their validity must
come from somewhere beyond the cognitive faculty itself. The source upon
which men again and again have seemed to fall back is Sensation; but
Sensation being transitory and dependent for its existence upon its
being felt can really give us no help. Some other, some self-existent
thing is wanted, and with considerable insight Schopenhauer suggested
that 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 sensible
arises. It is supposed to be generated out of pure Volition, but no
causal nexus, no direct connection of any kind is immediately apparent
between the two, and Schopenhauer in developing his theory did nothing
to supply the want. The doctrine cannot therefore be regarded as more
than a helpful stepping-stone to the true answer.
* * * * *
In recent years various forms of opportunist philosophies under the
names of Pragmatism, Pluralism, etc., have endeavoured to elude the
pressure of the dilemma and to solace mankind for the failure of
Kantianism by advising them to accept Experience as it is. But though
such a counsel of resignation may in a popular sense of the term be
regarded as philosophical it can hardly be accepted as a solution.
* * * * *
We find, then, that since man first began to inquire reflectively upon
the nature of his cognitive faculty his speculation has followed one or
other of two great lines or divisions of theory, neither of which has
been found to afford intellectual satisfaction.
We have (1) the theory that seeks in some way or other to derive the
real constituents of Science from the constitution of the cognitive
faculty itself. To this theory, which has inspired one whole stream of
speculation from Plato to Hegel, there are at least two absolutely fatal
objections.
(_a_) It fails altogether to account for the sensible presentation which
however fluent and unstable appears to stand in a direct and even
unique relation to the real. It fails to let us understand how that
relation arises, how the sensible is generated, or how it enters into
our consciousness.
(_b_) We are unable under this theory to discover how we ever reach a
Knowledge of the real World, how we can get beyond ourselves, how if the
Mind in its search for truth is perpetually intercepted by its own forms
it can ever furnish us with any genuine cognitions of the external.
(2) We have the theory that the essential forms of Reality are to be
found in the Object and are thence supplied to the Understanding, which
plays the part merely of a receptive surface or _tabula rasa_.
In the hands of Aristotle this doctrine took the form of an affirmation
that Nature must be regarded as an energetic process containing within
itself the potency by which it perpetually generated the actual.
Promising as it was in Aristotle's hands, this speculation was not
carried forward or assimilated by his immediate successors. Indeed, it
was practically forgotten until the intellectual revival of the
sixteenth century, which inaugurated the foundations of modern Science.
However little the fact may have been consciously recognised even by
the leaders of scientific discovery, this was the conception of Nature
which inspired and sustained the scientific advance. In the department
of philosophic speculation, however, it appeared only under the debased
and misleading form of a belief that the sensible presentation was the
true source of the contents of Cognition, that it was from Sensation
that the Mind of Man derived the whole fabric of Science. "_Penser c'est
sentir_" was the form in which it was expressed by Condillac, but was
equally the view which commended itself to Berkeley, at least in his
early 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 a
view. Obviously, if the Mind were merely the passive recipient of a
stream of impressions, no sort of rational Discourse, no scientific or
cognitive effort could ever have been stimulated into activity, and the
very ideas of causality and relation, indeed all that we associate with
the exercise of the understanding, could never have been called into
being.
Upon neither of these views of the nature of Knowledge can we arrive at
any consistent or intelligible conception of its genesis, nature, or
method of operation.
What, then, must we do? It is hardly doubtful that if we are to make
any progress we must find another and a new key whereby to unlock the
double door that bars the entrance to the inner shrine of truth.
Now _the_ fundamental, or at least _a_ fundamental error characteristic
of all these various efforts after a solution is to be found in the fact
that they view the World as a static thing rather than as a kinetic
process.
The World to vision seems a great still thing in or on which no doubt
innumerable bodies are moving to and fro, but which itself--the
fundamental thing--is solid and unchanging. But this is an illusion. The
seemingly unchanging features are changeless only in the monotony of
their constant mutation.
Cohering masses are rigid in respect only of the constancy of the
dynamic process of transmutation in which cohesion consists. The sun
shines eternally steady only in consequence of the ceaseless kinetic
energies which give it being.
What we are ever doing in rational Discourse, what Knowledge constantly
accomplishes, is to furnish an account, a reproduction of a series of
operations. The World is a process--an activity. That was recognised as
long ago as the days of Heracleitus, but his disciples did
not--although we think there is good ground for believing that he
did[60:1]--his disciples did not realise that a process, whilst it
implies constant flux and change, implies also something permanent even
in its mutations, something which undergoes the change and sustains the
flow.
To understand a thing is to discover how it _operates_. The eternal
forms of things are laws of natural action. Such are the law of
gravitation, the laws of optics or of chemical combination. A static
picture 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 the
activity of Nature. Thought, in short, _is_ an Activity which reproduces
the activity of things, the activity in which the phenomena of Nature
arise.
But how do we arrive at any apprehension of Natural Action? What informs
us that Nature is a potency ever operative? What suggests to us the
conception of potency at all? We reply that we arrive at the idea of
potent action because we are ourselves active beings. Our organism
maintains itself by constant physiological activities. These are the
permanent constancies of transmutation which _constitute_ the organism.
But superimposed upon these there are our voluntary exertional
activities. By these latter we necessarily mingle with and indeed
participate in the action of the natural forces which (as we usually
say) 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 fact
that we are really not merely surrounded by but are mingled with and
participate in the dynamic system.[61:1] We are continually pressing
with our weight upon the bodies on which we rest, we are continually
exerting or resisting the pressure of so-called adhering
masses--resistance-points in one dynamic system of which we are
ourselves a part. Thus it is that in our exertional action we reveal to
our consciousness not only the forms of our own activity but the forms
of the dynamic system which contains and yet transcends the Sensible and
the Ideal.
The theory we have suggested enables us to proceed at once to a
rational explanation of Sensation.
Sensation is _obstructed action_. A detailed consideration of as many as
you like to take of the myriad constituents of our sensible Experience
will continually and without exception confirm this simple fact.
In Nature it is the potent action which is real. It alone can be
directly represented by the activity of Thought. The mere obstruction of
activity is not a real thing, hence the unreal character of Sensation.
Yet the obstruction being an obstruction of the real action of Nature
is, if not real, at least actual and immediate. Nay, its presence in our
Experience, however mutable and unstable it may be, is the only sure
test and guarantee of Reality.
Each of the two leading theories which have dominated speculation
presents one partial aspect of the truth.
The eternal cognisable element of Reality _is_ apprehended, as the
Platonist holds, by the intellect and by the intellect alone. To that
extent the Platonist is right. That cognisable element is Action. But
Action is denoted for us only in the obstructions which it encounters.
These obstructions constitute our World of Sensible Experience, which
is therefore for each of us the sure indicator of the Real. In
recognising this fact the sensationalist is right in his turn.
* * * * *
Not only does the dynamic conception of Nature enable us to account for
Sensation, but it lets us see how the Sensible World becomes a
constituent of Experience. It is by and through its obstructions and
these only that we featurise or denote our Experience. It is by the
breaks, the turnings in the road that we cognise its course. It is by
the line of rocks and breakers that we define the shore. But we must not
mistake the turnings for the roadway nor the shore for the ocean.
It is in and by our activity that we discover this World of sensible
obstructions. The features of the Sensible World correspond therefore to
the laws of our exertional activity, but the correspondence is
relational, not resemblant. Just so, it is by the reflection of Light
that we discover the forms of the obstacle which solid bodies oppose to
the radiant undulation. The resultant colours correspond to the form of
these obstructions; but the correspondence is relational not resemblant.
The same is true of sounds, of tactual sensations, of every other
sensible obstacle to pure activity.
By the clouds of smoke we follow or used to follow the progress of the
battle, but the battle is something other than a cloud of smoke.
We are, as Plato told us in his famous allegory, like prisoners in a
cave--our attitude averted from the aperture, and it is only by the
shadows cast upon the cavern wall that we can interpret the events which
are 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 we
construct our scheme of phenomena, and by which the kinetic process of
Reality is denoted and conceived.
The question ever and anon occurs to us--How upon this view can we solve
the problem of transcendence? How even on this view of the case do we
manage to get beyond ourselves? How are we in any way helped thereto by
the fact that Reality consists in potent action rather than in
Sensation?
Again, the answer is significant. In action, that is, in exertional
action, we are really _part_ of a larger _whole_. Our exertional action
is _ab initio_ mingled in and forms really an integral part of the
dynamic system in which our life is involved. The ever operative forces
of Gravity, Cohesion, Chemical Affinity, and so forth are the phenomenal
expression of the laws of energetic transmutation in which we partake
and of which we are organically a part, however apparently separate and
disparate our bodies may seem to be. It is life and feeling, not action,
which really distinguish the individual from his environment, at least
from his material dynamic environment. Be it noted that what is required
is not an explanation of how we transcend Experience. That by no effort
can we ever do in Knowledge. All we are required to explain is how we
transcend our Thought and our Sensibility. The answer is: Our Experience
begins in action, and it begins therefore in a sphere which is beyond
the mere subjective Consciousness, and yet is _organically one_ with the
organs of Cognition and Feeling.
It is only by a visual fiction that we come to regard our active selves
as distinct from the dynamic system. We cannot, in fact, shake off the
bonds of corporeality, of gravity, of all the various restraints of our
organic activity.
Relatively, however, the cerebral activity of Thought is liberated from
the stresses of the dynamic environment; hence the apparent freedom and
independence, under certain conditions, of Thought, Imagination, and
Volition.
A great difficulty in realising this view of Experience is to be found
in the apparent Solidity and Inertia of material bodies. Sensible
experiences group themselves round these _constancies_. But a material
body, when its sensible concomitants are abstracted, is nothing more
than a permanent process of energy transmutation the interruption of
which in one form or another may originate Sensation. It follows that
the world of spatially extended bodies is a homogeneous and consistent
whole, reflecting in its laws and forms the real operations by which it
is constituted and sustained. But all this actual World is nevertheless
phenomenal only, albeit the phenomena are derived from and related to
the Real as change is to the thing which changes.
To a large extent we are misled by the impressive prominence of the
visual data. In vision we are presented with a system of inter-related
and simultaneously occurring sensations which we find by experience to
be the sure and certain indicators of the potent obstructions which our
activity encounters. For this reason we habitually make use of the
visual sign as the guide and instrument of our exertional activity, and
this habitual use leads us to regard the visual presentation as the
essential form of Reality. However sure we are that that is a false
view, it yet is very difficult to retrace our steps and re-enter the
elemental darkness which involves the blind.
The philosophic value of the interpretation of Experience by the blind
ought therefore to be very great. Observations made on the experiences
of the blind and of those to whom vision has been restored are not very
numerous, but many of these recorded by Plainer, the friend of Leibniz,
and others are of the highest value, and remarkably confirm the view for
which we have been contending.