great discovery of Physics during the nineteenth century has been that
these are all transformable into each other, and bear definite numerical
relations to each other in proportion to which such transformations take
place. Science availing itself of this discovery, unifies its conception
of Nature and gives expression to the doctrine of the
inter-transmutability of the various classes of physical phenomena by
postulating an entity called Energy, and regarding the various classes
of phenomena as transmutations which this entity undergoes. But Science
has been reluctant to recognise that it is now entitled to dispense with
the postulation of Matter. The theory, as announced by the leading men
of science, has therefore been to the effect that there exist in the
physical universe _two_ real things--Matter and Energy--in place of one
only, as commonly supposed for so long.
Now we maintain, on the contrary, that such a statement of physical
theory is erroneous and redundant; that Science is not obliged to
postulate _two_ such entities; that the concept of Energy supplies all
her requirements; and that the employment of that conception obviates
the very serious contradictions which are involved in any assumption of
a real entity of the nature of Matter as ordinarily understood--a
conception of which the very description involves difficulties which
have perplexed thinking men for more than two centuries.
Our argument on this point involves consideration of the place occupied
by Energy in a potential form.
Whilst the transformability of Heat, Light, Sound, and other physical
phenomena in definite numerical ratios has led to their being all
regarded as actual manifestations of transmutations proceeding in one
real thing, occasionally there is a seeming break in the catena; no
phenomenon can be detected into which the heat or light or other
immediately preceding manifestation has been transformed; but, later on,
the co-relative reappears, and by an argument as strong as that which
asserts the continuous identity of an intelligence before, during, and
after a temporary suspension of consciousness, the student of Physics
maintains the continued existence _in posse_, if not _in esse_, of the
Energy which by appropriate action he can again reveal in an active or
kinetic manifestation. Hence arises the conception of potential Energy.
The Energy to which we attribute the force of cohesion which any
particular body can on occasion manifest, we believe to exist
potentially whilst that body continues unacted upon. Our belief is
confirmed by our experience of the certainty with which, on the
recurrence of the given conditions, the force always again manifests
itself. In like manner the potential Energy to which we attribute the
Force of Gravitation we believe to exist at all times, even when not
kinetically active. Indeed, it only manifests itself when a
transmutation is taking place into some other form of Energy. Now it is
the universal association of these two forms of potential Energy with
the common and fundamental data of our sense-experience that has
suggested the construction in our minds of the conception of Matter, and
furnished us with the ideas of solidity, impenetrability, and weight
which constitute its groundwork.
Our view, therefore, is that the concept of materiality can, in the way
just indicated, be in all cases analysed into, and derived from, the
conception of Energy; and that Science, if consistent, cannot postulate
the reality of Matter as well. Potential Energy adequately supplies the
demand for a real substratum of which phenomena are the manifestation.
The whole question is very well worth the attention, not only of
scientific students but of metaphysicians. The inquiry will distinctly
gain if it receive the auxiliary attention of those who have studied the
process by which we form our mental conceptions, and whilst the students
of Physics deserve the honours of discovery, they cannot safely dispense
with such assistance, for which the present confused and inconsistent
state of the fundamental definitions of Physical Science most urgently
calls. There is here a neglected but very interesting field for the
metaphysician's efforts.
Recent scientific writings contain enough to show us that men of science
are already beginning to recognise not only the inconsistency of the
theory of two real things, but the dominating significance of the
conception of Energy, and are gradually coming to claim for the
conception of Matter little more than recognition as the vehicle of
energetic transmutation. Let us then for the moment accept the position
that Science--ridding itself of redundant theory--postulates Energy as
the real thing-in-itself, in terms of which it frames its statement of
physical phenomena, and let us examine briefly the effects which the
acceptance of this new postulate is likely to have on philosophic
speculation.
All my Presentment, all the content of my sense-experience, according to
this theory, I attribute to a multifarious continuous series of
transmutations constantly proceeding in some portion of the system of
Energy which constitutes the real substratum of phenomena. I study,
measure, and classify the different species of these transmutations; I
associate particular sensations and classes of sensations with
particular transmutations, and I thence infer the existence _in posse_
or _in esse_ of more or less Energy in some particular form transmuting
itself according to some one or other definite physical law. I infer
also the existence of various supplies of potential Energy constantly
available, and of other intelligent agents like myself.
I associate every such intelligent agent with a particular series or
group of sense-experiences, and further I assume that the world at his
Presentment, consists for him in a similar series of transmutations
continuously going on in that portion of the energetic system which I
believe 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 that
my own Presentment consists in the energetic transmutations proceeding
in my organism, I explain the universality of the experience of all
intelligent agents. In my own case, by that union of consciousness with
physical energy which accompanies the manifestation of life, I am
immediately related with that portion of the energetic system which is
the real substratum of my organism, and am made conscious of the series
of transmutations occurring at that particular point in it which is
represented by my sensory system. In the case of others, from certain of
the transmutations occurring in my Presentment, I am led to infer the
existence of other similar microcosmic systems in the energetic
macrocosm of the physical universe.
This is all very well as a theory, but if all I know is the series of
transmutations occurring in the portion of the system of Energy related
directly to my intelligence, how did I ever learn to infer from these
transmutations the existence of that Energy underlying them, and still
more of the whole energetic system extending far beyond my organism? How
do I deduce from transmutations proceeding in the portion of the
energetic system which constitutes the real substratum of my organism
the existence, not only of that substratum itself, but of other portions
of the system similarly related to other intelligences, and of the
energetic system as a whole? How do I get beyond my Presentment? How
pass from Ideality to Existence?
I answer that I never could by any chance or possibility have got beyond
it or got any suggestion of the Reality had I been merely related to my
Presentment as a passive and percipient subject. In point of fact,
however, I am in relation with the energetic system not merely or
primarily as an Intelligence percipient of the transmutations proceeding
in it at a particular point, but also as a Will initiative to some
extent of such transmutations and capable of influencing and directing
the physical process. Life necessarily involves a process of energetic
transmutation constantly proceeding at that portion of the system of
Energy which constitutes my organism, and I am there related as Will
with a larger system which embraces the part in which intelligence is
developed.
Fundamentally, life manifests itself in all grades of the zoologic
hierarchy as a union of Volition (or what appears in action as Volition)
with some particular point in the universe of physical Energy, the union
constituting what we call a living organism.
Despite its profound importance to us personally and to our race, we
should not forget that, objectively considered, the brain in man and the
higher animals is merely a special organ highly developed by use, as
the trunk is in the elephant, the middle phalanx in the horse, or wings
in the bird. Intelligence is hardly to any extent a necessity of the
vital union of the Will with the energetic system. It is not at all
developed in the vegetal kingdom, hardly at all in some branches of the
animal, and there may conceivably be an infinite number of other
"kingdoms" in which it may be either undeveloped, or very differently
developed, or superseded by some other manifestation by us unimaginable.
Its development indeed seems to be concurrent with the development of a
locomotive faculty--a striking confirmation of the theory that it is in
our activity that we derive the suggestions which call forth the
exercise of the Understanding and transform sensation into perception.
It is only with a comparative fraction of the organism that I am related
as a passively percipient intelligence. I am directly or indirectly
related as Will, as an originative cause of activity, with a larger
portion of my organism, many parts of which are quite distinct from the
cognitive portion. Now it is from my relation as Will with Energy other
than and beyond the energetic transmutations which constitute my
Presentment that I discover the energetic system of Nature, as a real
thing--beyond, underlying, and by its transmutations constitutive of my
Presentment. Many of the transmutations which occur in my Presentment I
recognise as attributable to my own volitional activity operating upon
my energetic organism, and _in my own activity there is thus suggested
to me a source of phenomena lying beyond these phenomena themselves_. A
transmutation initiated in my brain is a pure idea. The key which
suggests to me the real world is the occurrence of transmutations
ascribable to my activity operating beyond the sphere which constitutes
my Presentment.
It is in this way that I originally discover the real energetic
substratum to the phenomenal world of my Presentment. I learn from the
transmutations to infer the agency and operation of the underlying
energy, and thus gradually construct my whole systematic conception of
the 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 Will
to the energetic system represented by my organism, including the
portion thereof related to my intelligence, supplies us therefore with a
key to the inevitable reference of thoughts to things.
I distinguish in my active experience a clear difference between wishing
and willing, and further between willing and effective action. My
Power--the Energy related to my Will--the exertion of which is
necessary to translate Volition into an overt result--is a limited and
quantifiable thing, but that such a hidden energetic medium or
substratum underlies all phenomena is evident from the fact that I do
not will directly the appearance of any given phenomenon. I may wish
that. But when the Volition is reached and the wish transformed into
overt exertion I find myself involved in the multifarious processes of
an energetic system which I may so far influence, but which is
nevertheless in many ways constantly going on irrespective of my
Volition. I may wish to avoid pain and may will certain exertions with
that view, but the consequences may be the reverse of what I wished.
This shows that the Volition operates immediately not on the sensation
but on the energetic system.
In all cases between Volition and overt result there seems to be erected
and constantly maintained around me a vast energetic system, a part but
only a small part of which, namely the Energy of my organism, can be
influenced directly by my Will, whilst, even in immediate relation with
that part, transmutations beyond the reach of my Will are constantly
going on. Indeed, what fundamentally distinguishes Volition from Desire
is its relation to the energetic system.
The doctrine of Energy therefore puts in a new and clearer light the
whole theory of Causation.
It is common for philosophers to talk of invariable sequence as the
criterion of Causality. But, in fact, that is quite fallacious. No one
ever regards a phenomenon as the cause of another phenomenon. We ascribe
Causality to the energetic transmutation which in some form or other we
inevitably believe to accompany the appearance of every phenomenon. We
never postulate a causal relation between day and night--the most
notable case of invariable sequence. When we say the fire warms the
room, or the horse draws the cart, or the sun ripens the corn, it is the
Energy which we rightly or wrongly associate with the visual sensation
referred to in the words "fire" and "horse" and "sun" of which we are
thinking, and by no means of these visual sensations themselves. As has
been well said, we never suppose that the leading carriage of the train
draws those behind it, although their relation of sequence is quite as
close to it as to the engine.
True, it is and must be from and by phenomena only that I infer and
measure the transmutations of Energy, but the transmutations measured
are operations of the real thing-in-itself postulated by Science. The
existence of such Energy is suggested to me primarily in my experience
of my own activity in which I recognise my power of doing work--a
quantifiable and measurable thing, homogeneous with the Energy in
respect of which Science states the relations and conditions of all
physical phenomena. My most incessant mental act is that by which, on
the analogy of my own active experience, I refer all phenomena to the
underlying energetic system. This reference it is which transforms
sensation into perception; and the constant affirmation of this
reference is the great function of the synthetic mental activity of the
understanding, and is at once the origin and explanation of that
imperative mental tendency which metaphysicians call the law of
Causality.
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 the
transmutations occurring in that particular part of the energetic system
which constitutes the real substratum of the brain, then phenomena as a
whole must arise in transmutation, in a process of Becoming rather than
in a state of Being, and Space must be the content, the condition, in
which that process proceeds. The laws of Space, therefore, are laws, so
to speak, of motion, not of position. The most absolutely still and
motionless visual presentation is really a series of constant
transmutations of Energy and the form of Space is constituted by the
laws of transmutation, which are thus at once the necessary conditions
of my perception and the universal conditions of all sense-perception.
Space, therefore, does not contain the real thing which sustains the
phenomenal world any more than it does the reality which underlies my
conscious self. It is the universal condition of the transmutations
which constitute phenomena; and it therefore "contains" all these
phenomena, including my body as phenomenon and only as phenomenon. Its
form is discovered by my organic motor activity, and in representing
this activity the mind constructs its concepts of Space and Extension.
This view of the nature of Space, by relating its forms and laws with
the objective, and a-logical thing-in-itself in virtue of the
transmutations of which our sense-experience occurs, relieves an obvious
difficulty which must always have been felt in accepting without
qualification the purely Kantian view which regarded it as a category
imposed by the Intelligence upon the otherwise unknowable world of
sense.
The most ardent assertors of the ideality of Space have hitherto
apparently had difficulty in avoiding the tendency to conceive it as the
persistent all-embracing objective content of the thing-in-itself, not
merely of the phenomenon, although the latter only might enter into
Knowledge. The doctrine, however, which presents our conception of Space
as discovered in our activity amid resistant transmutation-processes not
only establishes its ideality but at the same time explains the relation
which its form nevertheless bears to the objective material laws of the
sensible presentation. It liberates the mind from the oppressive
necessity of regarding Space as still somehow objectively extending and
containing the real world. It also relieves an obvious difficulty which
confronts the Philosophy of Schopenhauer in locating those
transcendental forms of the phenomenon which are imposed _a priori_ upon
the presentation, and yet are not to be found in the pure Volition.
Of course, it must never be forgotten that my whole sentient experience
consists primarily of the series of energetic transmutations occurring
at that part of the energetic system which is in immediate vital
relation with my consciousness. It is my experience of active exertion,
of moving, speaking, etc., which gives a suggestion of the real
energetic world. The transmutations of the real Energy of the world
beyond my organism never enter my Consciousness. Transmutations arising
beyond my body only enter the presentation by influencing the cerebral
process. The luminous undulation and the sound-wave must both produce
transmutation of the cerebral Energy in order to affect Consciousness.
Yet the various characters of the transmitted impulses are
distinguishable in the resultant cerebral transmutations. Thus I feel
sensations of hardness, roughness, pain, colour, sound, etc. It is by a
process of mental construction that I associate these with the forms of
my exertional activity, and thus frame my conceptions of real bodies in
the world around me--those which I more directly associate with the
Energy subject to my Volition being conceived as representing my body.
For reasons of convenience, I refer those conceptions chiefly to the
co-ordinated visual presentation, and thus build up my conception of the
extended world of material things. Science is possible because all
transmutations of Energy take place according to definite numerical laws
and ratios. The whole work of Science is to explain every phenomenon in
terms of its definite transmutation of Energy. These definite numerical
laws and processes are characteristic of all Energy transmutation, and
thus regulate the experience of every intelligent being. It is in virtue
of these that our separate systems of knowledge correspond, and that we
are thus presented each with corresponding aspects of one outer world.
The laws which regulate the cerebral changes that accompany
sense-presentation are for me the necessary _a priori_ laws of
perception. It is because these laws operate in common in all brains
that community of intercourse is possible amongst mankind. It is because
of the further fact that the whole of the transmutations of Energy which
constitute physical phenomena compose a numerically inter-related and
regulated system that Science and rational knowledge are possible to the
intellect of man. Our knowledge is what we are obliged to think and
assert regarding experience; but the universality of experience is not
explained merely by the common nature and general laws of Intelligence,
but depends also on the generality of the laws under which the
transmutations of Energy proceed.
We are now, therefore, by the aid of the doctrine of Energy, better able
than before to distinguish accurately between the Ideal and the Real as
contrasted elements in our experience.
My Presentment as a whole consists in the transmutation-processes--in
the sensations, feelings, perceptions, images, ideas--in short, in all
that is going on at the point where (I necessarily express myself in
terms of spatial relations, though in this connection these are
figurative) my sentience and intelligence are developed.
My whole Presentment is, therefore, in one sense subjective, or, as some
would say, ideal. For me, my Presentment is the impression produced on,
the condition established in, my Consciousness in virtue of what is
going on at this so-called point of contact.
What we mean, therefore, by the subjectivity or ideality of the
Presentment is the aspect of energetic transmutations when viewed as
affecting my Consciousness in contrast with their obverse aspect when
viewed as transmutations in the objective system. As my Presentment,
they are all subjective or ideal, and it is in this reference that
Berkeley and Hume, for instance, speak of ideas of sense, such as the
colour blue, the heat of the fire, the pain of a blow. These,
constituting the bulk of the Presentment, they distinguish from what
Berkeley called ideas of the imagination--those stimulated or
originated, or, as he said, "excited," by the intelligence itself.
Whilst he contended that both classes are ideal or subjective, in
respect that they are constituents of the Presentment, the latter have
an additional title to subjectivity in respect of their origin, and
constitute what are called "ideas" when the word is used in
contra-distinction to "sensations"--such pure ideas occurring in
response to a subjective impulse.
On the other hand, there is a sense in which the Presentment is, if not
real, at least actual and objective.
So far as we know, Intelligence never develops except in conjunction
with an organism--that is, in vital relation with physical Energy. My
Presentment is constituted by the occurrence and depends upon the
continuance of the transmutations or operations proceeding at the
related point in the energetic system. Even pure ideas, though
subjective not only in regard to aspect but in regard to their origin,
are objective in respect that they also consist in an energetic
transmutation.
Herein lies the germ of truth to be discovered even in the unintelligent
dogmatism of those philosophers who assert the absolute Reality of my
Presentment, as such--not merely its actuality. It is comparatively
seldom, however, either in Science or Philosophy, that we meet a thinker
prepared to go as far as that. Most take refuge in a distinction between
primary and secondary qualities of bodies, classing my sensations as
non-resembling secondary qualities, which they admit cannot be conceived
to exist without the mind in the form in which they make up my
Presentment, but reserving five or six primary qualities--solidity,
extension, figure, motion, rest--which they conceive to exist
independently, just as they enter into my Presentment. In point of fact,
however, these so-called primary qualities are not the names of
intuitions, but are abstractions or generalisations of the most general
and necessary elements of my active Experience by reference to which I
mentally construct my world. The transmutations of Energy are not a
never-repeated accidental kaleidoscope. They proceed according to
constant, definite, measurable laws, and though subordinate variations
are infinite and make up the details of my Presentment, the general laws
and conditions according to which all Energy transmutes are definite,
and constitute the general features or qualities of my Experience, and
these are the so-called primary qualities of bodies regarded in the
light of the doctrine of Energy.
The primary quality of extension, in particular, is a conception
resulting from the association of my visual Presentment with my power of
active exertion, and the delusive tendency to regard this quality as in
some sense primarily and fundamentally real is due to the unconscious
recognition of the fact that it is in virtue of my power, or association
as an agent with the energetic system, that I derive a suggestion of the
real world beyond the phenomena which constitute my experience.