my conceptions of free space and of resistance between bodies. My
primary sensations are the sensations of touch, and the primary impulse
of thought is to relate these with my active exertions. When sight is
first restored to the blind the first impulse is to regard the new
sensation as a form of touch. Its intellectual suggestiveness is a
development. The system or stream of transmutations in which my
volitional activity principally takes part is that represented by the
operation of the forces of Gravitation and Cohesion; the system which
influences my visual sensations is a quite different series. The changes
in this latter series, by their greater rapidity, enable me to
anticipate the other series, and for this and other reasons I employ
these sensations to signalise and symbolise the transmutations
proceeding in the series with which I am more immediately related as an
active and "willing" agent. All transmutations, if they result in
sensations, must do so by producing changes in the Energy of my
organism, and must therefore be conditioned by the general laws which
regulate the changes which occur there, or, in other words, must be
contained within a self-consistent spatial condition; but the
differences in the characters of visual Space, as it is called, and the
spatial content of my activity, reflect the differences in the series of
energetic 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 aesthetic enunciated by Kant,
who first pointed out that there are elements, and those the most
necessary and universal, in the sense-presentation which bear the
character of ideality as fully as the most subjective efforts of our
ideative activity. More particularly do we illustrate the ideality of
Space as a cognition precedent to experience. It is because general laws
constantly operative regulate the transmutations which constitute the
individual's Presentment that it is possible for him to abstract from
and generalise the data of sense; and it is because the subjective
process of Ideation, by which we mean our representative mental activity
in its widest sense, consists also in transmutations under the same
general laws of the same portion of the energetic organism, that it is
possible to frame general ideas. These general laws of organic
transmutation are the _a priori_ conditions of the necessary
determination in time of all existences in the world of phenomena.
The form, therefore, of the phenomenon, in the language of Kant, is
constituted by the transmutations of the Energy immediately related to
consciousness; the matter of the phenomenon is constituted by the
varieties produced in these by the transmitted transmutations from the
Energy beyond--just as the musician may produce a constant variety of
harmonies upon his instrument, but all must be conditioned by the
relations fixed and established between the notes of which the
instrument is composed. Transmutations of the cerebral Energy may be
stimulated not only from without, but by subjective impulse from within;
but in either case the laws of these transmutations are the necessary
form of experience, and it is the possibility of transmutation upon an
internal and subjective impulse which makes possible the formation of
synthetical judgments _a priori_. It is as if the organ were not only
responsive to impressions upon its keyboard from without, but were also
automotive and could originate harmonies in its own notes; and as if,
moreover, it were endowed with consciousness so as to receive an
intuition of both classes of music. The former would correspond to
sensations, the latter to ideas; and we might imagine such an instrument
by presenting to itself its own system of notes, contriving thus to
frame _a priori_ a synthetical system of these general musical laws
which would constitute the necessary and universal form of its whole
musical experience. To complete the perhaps fantastic analogy we must
imagine the world to be one co-ordinated musical system, and our
instrument to be endowed with the power of playing upon the other
keyboards; of thence deriving the suggestion of the distinction between
the internal and external impulses which respectively awakened harmonies
within itself; and lastly, of thus at length conceiving in the spirit of
science that the necessary and universal laws which it recognised as the
most subjective and fundamental conditions of its own operation, at the
same time regulated the activity of the entire musical universe.
How natural it would be for such an intelligent musical instrument, if
unhappily endowed with common sense, to believe and assert that the real
substance of the universe consisted solely of sounds. Yet how evident
would it be to us from our standpoint of more absolute knowledge that
the whole orchestra of sounds, although actual and quite distinct from
consciousness, was still merely phenomenal, and yet withal, in its every
expression, revealed the laws and structure of reality--of the system of
things in themselves--a system the reality of which was dissimilar to
those appearances, though all its laws and structure could be studied
and derived from them.
Berkeley, therefore, erred seriously when he described the idea as a
fainter sensation. Faint subjective reproductions of our sensations, as
of blue, green, or the like, constitute a very insignificant element in
our mental furniture. We seldom pursue so far into detail the ideative
effort. Severely and effectively as Berkeley criticised Locke's account
of abstract ideas, the fact remains that abstraction is a primary
feature of our whole conceptual system; and the abstractable elements of
the sensible presentation being the necessary constituents of all
ideative representation are properly denominated ideal. The one element
of particularity which every idea lacks is the reference to the
transmitted transmutation to which the sensible phenomenon owes its
origin. We derive such reference to the external solely from the
obstructions which our free activity encounters and without which we
could receive no suggestion of the non-ego, and in particular no
suggestion of the dynamic element which fundamentally distinguishes
things from thoughts. The empirical content of experience--the so-called
secondary qualities of bodies--are often called in their subjective
aspect "ideal" because the mental impression is obviously very
different from the transmutation objectively regarded. But this is to
confound the ideal with the subjective, which latter term is that
properly applicable both to the sensible impression and to purely mental
activity. The primary qualities, being the general laws or forms of
organic Energy-transmutation, are in a higher sense ideal, for they are
the necessary conditions under which both sense-presentation and
ideative representation proceed. Whilst, therefore, as Kant maintained,
they are the _a priori_ element in perception, they at the same time
constitute the laws which regulate all Energy-transmutation within our
experience both organic and extra-organic.
We hold, therefore, to the Platonic doctrine that whilst, on the one
hand, the sensible is only an object of thought in so far as it partakes
of the intelligible, on the other hand the idea is not only a type for
the individual mind, but is partaker also of the laws which penetrate
the system of things. Idealism as a Philosophy, in denying the validity
of any reference of the content of the Presentment to a further
existence outside of the subjective experience, has induced that wider
use of the term idea which applies it to the whole actuality of
experience in its subjective aspect. With the advance of Philosophy we
must revert to that more ancient use of the term idea which confines
its extension into the realm of the perceptual to those elements of the
sensible presentation which can be reproduced by the conceptual activity
of the subject, and which in asserting, for instance, the ideality of
Space, reminds us at the same time that Ideality implies not merely
subjectivity, but the expression or representation also of some aspect
of those laws which regulate the system of Reality.
But is not common sense right, after all? Do I really mean to say that
tables, chairs, houses, mountains--the whole world of my Presentment,
are to be regarded as shrivelled up and located in my brain, or in the
energetic correlative of my brain? Is the whole Universe, as known to me
or conceived by me, contained within a minute portion of itself--the
brain? Now Science does say something very like this, and the logical
difficulties of the position are very pressing. But they cannot be got
over by attempting to revert to common sense, because to assert that all
my conceived Universe is immediately perceived by me as it exists, would
seem to involve a diffusion of my intelligence throughout Space which is
still more inconceivable and self-contradictory. Even apart from this
implication, the assumption of the Reality of the phenomenal world
destroys itself. To assume the reality of so-called material particles
is to lay the foundation of an argument which surely leads to the
conclusion that the whole world of my consciousness is produced by and
consists in motions in that certain small group of these same molecules
which is assumed to make up my brain. The solution is only reached when
we discover that the error lies in forgetting that the Reality which is
the seat of my Presentment is itself unperceived, and that what I
commonly call a body and a brain are the phenomena occurring in my
Presentment, and which I associate with such real substratum. The real
substratum of my Presentment is a part of the energetic Universe, which
is constantly undergoing transmutations. Wherever such Energy is united,
in an organism, with consciousness these transmutations, as affecting
and perceived by such consciousness, constitute its Presentment or
sense-experience; and aided by the constructive activity of thought
expand, as it were, subjectively into a whole world of experience, as
the electric current vibrating darkly along the narrow confines of the
wire suddenly expands at the carbon point into the luminous undulations
which light a city.
We admit, therefore, to the full the actuality and objectivity of the
sensible presentation. We only deny that it is the real thing-in-itself.
The latter is not discovered by sense. My energetic organism is like a
well-fitting garment; I do not feel it at all. I feel only changes or
transmutations taking place in it. Be not alarmed, therefore, for your
common-sense world. We leave it to you intact and actual--not deducting
even a single primary quality. Allowing fully for the extent to which,
little suspected by you, it is a mentally constructed system, its
elements 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 identic
intelligent agent, am not given to myself immediately in my Presentment,
any more than is the real object. The existence of my Ego, of my
cogitant self, is an inference which I am compelled to draw from the
facts of my mental activity. _Cogito, ergo sum._ Similarly, my energetic
organism is the real a-logical thing-in-itself which I am compelled to
postulate in order to explain my perception of physical phenomena in the
light of my physical activity; _ago, ergo possum_.
We must not overlook the unique position in our Presentment occupied by
the visual presentation. Its universality, simultaneousness, minute
accuracy, quantifiability, etc., are such that it is really to the
visual Presentment that I refer all other elements in my
sense-experience. I think of them with reference to it. In connection
with it I mentally construct my world. I associate with some
modification of the visual presentation the phenomena resultant upon the
energetic activity of my own organism, and the other forces and
potential Energies which that activity reveals and suggests. It is thus
that I derive the compound idea of Body as consisting of Figure,
Extension, and Solidity. The continued appearance in my visual
presentation of the grey colour which I am now seeing is to me the sign
of the continued persistence of that potential Energy in virtue of which
I regard it as the appearance of a solid extended stone wall. Everything
is referred to the visual presentation, and it is in reference to it
that the mind works in constructing its world.
The whole theory of molecular action is a theory constructed in
reference to the visual presentation--the reality of which, strangely,
it seems to result in overthrowing. A born-blind man could never have
invented the conception of atoms or molecules. This is well worth
thinking over. The visual presentation is not really fundamental; and we
must undo the inversion induced by its great convenience whereby we
refer to it all the other elements of our sense-experience and conceive
of our activity and our whole actual world by reference to the visible
sign. It is in consequence of this reference to the visual that bodies
are thought of as discrete units, so that it is difficult to conceive
that 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 as
the continuous process of thought is very different from the disparate
symbols of speech.
I habitually refer to the visual extended image as the primary basis of
my idea of the world, or of any particular part of the world, such as my
dining-room. Why? Simply because, for the reasons already noted, the
sense of sight is the sense of universal reference. In principle it is
the same habitual tendency which makes me associate every element of my
world with its appropriate name. It is different in the case of other
sensations. 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 motions
of mass which, if I were present, would occasion the subjective
sensations of sound. But for the habitual tendency arising from the
universal reference to the visible I would do the same in the case of
the visual image. All I am necessitated to think is a real event--a
real, physical, dynamical transmutation--proceeding quite independently
of my perception or presence; and if I can only manage to realise that I
must, for philosophical purposes, eliminate my reference to visual as
well as to audible or other sensations, I will understand that all I am
entitled to, and all I can, without hopeless contradiction, postulate as
real thing existing independently of my perception, is a transmutation
of Energy. This energy is imperceptible, unextended, unfigured, yet it
is by no means a mere logical or mental necessity or associative
tendency. On the contrary, it is very real. It sustains my every act. By
an imperative mental necessity I am obliged, by inference from my
experiences as an active and percipient agent, to postulate the
energetic system in which I am involved, and with one particular centre
in which I am organically related.
But we recall at this point that Science says she must still postulate
Matter as the vehicle of Energy. But what does that mean except that the
subject of her studies is the sensible presentation which itself
consists of energy transmutation in part constantly changing but with
relatively permanent and recurrent elements? These more permanent
elements constitute what we call bodies. If the sensible presentation
consisted exclusively of one continuous, unchanging phenomenon, Reason
would never be stimulated, and Personality, Cause, Power would never
have been postulated or conceived. But the transmutation is constantly
"accelerated"--incessantly fluctuates and varies. Certain of these
variations I recognise as related to my own volitional activity, and I
am thus furnished with a key which enables me, by a sympathetic analogy,
to attribute all the changes in my experience to various agents, each
related to the other by the intervention of this system of physical
Energy. Some of these I can further trace to the initiative of Volition
of myself or other persons; others I can only recognise as integral
parts of the vast energetic system of Nature, the stimulus of which I
cannot follow further.
The reality of Matter is said to be proved by its indestructibility; but
this characteristic can easily be resolved into (1) the
indestructibility of Space and Extension which we have seen to be merely
another name for the necessity or inevitable universality of the general
laws and conditions of Energy transmutation, and (2) the
indestructibility of the Energy to the transmutations of which we
attribute the forces of Cohesion and Gravitation.
All vital activity is but a producing of changes in the stream of
transmutation. We never do, nor in the nature of things do we ever try
to, increase or diminish the quantity of the real Energy itself. We
instinctively recognise the objective source of our physical power, and
this has led some thinkers to suppose that the indestructibility of
Matter is an _a priori_ datum of thought. But such a belief is quite
unfounded. All it amounts to is a recognition that the destruction of
Matter is _beyond our power_--a necessary consequence of the fact that
we merely act upon the transmutation-process. Many a long contest
between the supporters of _a priori_ and experiential knowledge can be
set at rest by this view of the mediating functions of the energetic
organism.
The reflections which we have thus briefly noted and illustrated open a
wide field for inquiry. The scientific doctrine of Energy would seem to
be pregnant with momentous consequences for Philosophy, and it is worth
while for metaphysicians to devote to this subject the deepest and most
deliberate thought. The results cannot easily be grasped by a mere
cursory perusal of memoranda, in which we have only sketched a few
salient aspects of the doctrine. We deprecate unwarrantable assurance,
and are fully conscious of the difficulty of adequately expressing
thought on such a theme; but we have not written rashly nor without
good 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 be
adequately and quantifiably stated. At the same time it furnishes
Philosophy with a theory of the objectively real thing-in-itself which
satisfied those necessities of thought by which we are constrained to
interpret our sense-experience by a constant reference to a Reality
beyond it--a necessity due to our association as Actors with an Energy
beyond that which is the seat of our Presentment. Such a view avoids the
incurable difficulties and contradictions involved in the theory of the
reality of extended material substance, or in any theory, indeed, which
asserts the reality--as presented--of the sensible presentation.
Physical Reality thus conceived is consistently thinkable as co-existent
with the thing-in-itself--be it ultimately Intelligence or Volition--of
which our cognitive and conative existence is a manifestation. And such
a doctrine, by explaining all phenomena as transmutations proceeding
(according to the definite mathematical laws prevailing throughout the
whole Universe of Energy) at that point in the system which is
organically related to Consciousness, accounts at once for the apparent
apriority and necessity of the qualities of Space, and at the same time
for their evident universality and objectivity.
In a word, it would rather seem as if Science, unconscious of its
pregnant possibilities, has not only formulated a theory which
co-ordinates and unifies the entire fabric of physical knowledge, but
has also at length furnished Philosophy with the key to that problem the
solution of which has, in the words of Schopenhauer, been the main
endeavour of philosophers for more than two centuries, namely, to
separate by a correctly drawn line of cleavage the Ideal--that which
belongs to our knowledge as such--from the Real, that which exists
independently of us; and thus to determine the relation of each to the
other.
To us it seems not strange that Philosophy should in the end be indebted
to Science for this solution--nor should Science, in the hour of her
greatest speculative victory, object too hastily to the assistance which
the thinker, trained to the study of the process of thought, can render
in clarifying and restating in its metaphysical aspects a theory which,
if profoundly conceived, and formulated by men of science from Rumford
and Davy to Stewart, Tait, and Kelvin, was partially anticipated by the
metaphysician who conceived the world as will and idea.
We maintain, therefore, that the presentation of sense, the continuum
or manifold, or what you will, consists in the transmutations of a real
substance itself unextended and unperceived; that the laws of these
transmutations are what constitute the geometric all-containing Space;
that at a point in this real energetic system organically related to the
intelligent self, the transmutations occurring there constitute the
individual's sensible experience; that his mind, by also actively
influencing the system at that point, can stimulate the train of
transmutations which constitute his world of ideas; that the mind can
discover itself as Will influencing transmutations in the organism which
are transmitted through a wider, larger portion of the system; and can
recognise the transmutations at the related point as influenced
sometimes by its own Volition and sometimes by other agents. We seek to
bring the added light of scientific theory to reconcile the conflict
between the law and the fact, between the objects of reflection and the
objects of sense, between the world of thought and the world of
phenomena,--the problem which Plato raised and which has since been the
central problem of Metaphysics. In doing so we present a doctrine which
not only maintains the truth of the Ideal, and the actuality of the
phenomenal, and the relative reality of both, but which proves, with
all the cogency of Science, how it is that the Sensible is permeated by
and made knowable only by the Ideal, by the laws of the transmutations
which constitute actuality, and that, on the other hand, the Ideal only
enters experience as the regulative principle of the ever-transmuting
Reality.
The world consists not merely of phenomena, nor of phenomena and laws
which regulate them. These are but transitional and imperfect aspects of
Reality. "Our standard of Truth and Reality," says a recent writer,
"moves us on towards an individual with laws of its own, and to laws
which form the vital substance of a single existence." We approach such
a goal in the conception of Energy--the laws of whose constant
transmutations are what we call Nature.
We must distinguish Energy as Absolute Reality from such conceptions as
Activity, which is its subjective aspect, or as Force, which is really
the rate at which Energy is, in certain cases, transformed. Dynamics,
which investigates Force, is a study of the fundamental transmutations
of Energy. It postulates Energy as the Real Entity in terms of which it
can frame a satisfactory theory of dynamical phenomena.