THE GRAND RESULT OF DISSECTING PHENOMENA.
Since the days of Immanuel Kant, no philosophy, no rational theology, no
ultimate science, not referring to the results of his work, has had any
real basis in thought--the reason being that he saw through, and
explained, the principle of universal relativity, the law of scientific
idealism, and relaid the whole structure, from the corner-stone up.
Before Kant it was known well enough that "matter," however we must all
accept it with our hands and eyes, has no standing, under the analysis of
thought, except as a system of effects on ourselves. Hume, we remember,
saw all this so clearly that he pronounced the very organs of sense, "our
limbs and members," to be "not our body," but "certain impressions" to
which the mind ascribes "a corporeal existence." Our limbs and members
certainly _are_ our body--the only body we have--but Hume was right in his
meaning that our body is a phenomenon which has no existence but as a
plexus of impressions on a principle of intelligence, possessing various
modes of reception, named senses. But this _principle_ of _intelligence_
itself was, to Hume, not a fact to be grasped by "reason," not a principle
to be known and described, but was to be taken as a "force and vivacity"
unknowable beyond an _instinct_ of it. Hume's unknowable "force and
vivacity"--an improved form of Locke's "blank-tablet"--Kant _analyzed_ in
the light of its products; namely, those conjuncts of sense-effects called
objects; those conjuncts of objects called species, genera, and
categories; and finally those conjuncts of all things and all conditions
of things, called transcendental ideas. Now, such conjuncts of various
"manifolds" actually exist. They are man's percepts and concepts; they are
his facts, his environment. But _as_ percepts and concepts, and always
conjuncts of "the manifold," they are formed, organized, totalized,
through a _principle_--the principle of perception and conception itself.
This is Kant's _a-priori_ synthetical unit, common and necessary to all
"things" and to all "experience."
The last word of any weight, against this reduction of matter to mind, was
said a few years ago by that exceptionally acute thinker, Professor
Huxley, in his summary of Hume. Too able and learned, both as philosopher
and scientist, to question idealism, Huxley admitted it unqualifiedly.
But, not having gone beyond the British proofs of it, he defended what is
commonly called "materialism" in this way:
"If we analyze the proposition that all mental phenomena are the effects
or products of material phenomena, all that it means amounts to this: that
whenever those states of consciousness which we call sensation, or
emotion, or thought, come into existence, complete investigation will show
good reason for the belief that they are preceded by those other phenomena
of consciousness to which we give the names of matter and motion. All
material changes appear, in the long run, to be modes of motion; but our
knowledge of motion is nothing but that of a change in the place and order
of our sensations; just as our knowledge of matter is restricted to those
feelings of which we assume it to be the cause."
To this last posture of materialism, a competent understanding of Kant is
the _only reply that has ever been needed_. It is simply of no consequence
to the case what states of consciousness precede or follow other states of
consciousness. Let it be granted (whether true or not) that "phenomena of
consciousness to which we give the names of matter and motion" precede all
others. What of it? Kant has proved to us that _no_ phenomenon of
consciousness--no matter, no motion, no sensation--and, beyond all these,
no time and no space, in which all the rest appear--has, or can have, _any
existence_, except as put into unity, form, and order, by the unity, form,
and order of mind. If both "the synthesis of apprehension" and "the
synthesis of apperception" enter into any state of consciousness named
matter, _to give it birth_, there is no possibility that the element of
intelligence can be an _after-birth_ of the process.
All our objects, then, from a germ cell to the horizon, are constructed
such through a mental principle innate in our own structure. But here it
must be re-iterated and re-emphasized that whatever we, as units of mind,
may embody in objects as _form_, the _filling_ of them is not ours. It
has a source apart. The filling of our objects comes from "the ultimate
non-ego," the "background of matter." This ultimate non-ego was a heritage
to Kant from British idealism. He took it for granted at his first step
and held by it unchanged when he was old and exhausted. He called it the
"noumenon," the "real correlate of matter," and pluralized it as "things
in themselves." But he insisted, as firmly as Herbert Spencer has since
done, that the "noumenon" is "unknown and unknowable."
In a certain way--vital enough, too--"things in themselves" _are_ "unknown
and unknowable." Man is a small, dependent, limited being. Let us admit at
once every old proverb in the world, to the effect that "the finite cannot
comprehend the infinite." Sir William Hamilton issued a tedious list of
such proverbs. Let us adopt the whole of it. "The finite cannot comprehend
the infinite." The very meaning of "things in themselves" is that they are
withheld from us in their _specific contents_. But in their _general
nature_ they are related and revealed to us; and the revelation is always
asserted when we name them "source of impact," the "real correlate of
matter," "things in themselves," or even "the unknown and unknowable." Is
there an "unknown and unknowable?" Yes, there _is_. But whatever _is_ has
_being_--_must_ have being, or not be that which "is." So much then we
_know_ of "the unknown and unknowable"; it has being; it is a _fact_. But
we know it negatively, as well as positively. We know what it is _not_, on
precisely the same ground that we know what it _is_. Being a "noumenon,"
it is _not_ a phenomenon; being a "thing in _itself_," it is not what
things are to _us_. Being "the real correlate of matter," it is _not_
matter, but is the objective background of matter.
But _now_: Kant had analyzed matter and found it to be a _relation_--a
relation between finite subjective awareness and this very noumenal
background now in evidence. He had found, too, that all _matter_--every
spicule of it--is _exhausted in the relation_. He had found that, out of
the relation, _matter has no existence_. By these presents, then, we know
that the objective background of matter, the ultimate non-ego, is _not
material_.
And, at this point, where are we, if we pause and think? When reduced to
elements, to principles, what is there of the universe--the all of things?
Just the subjective and the objective, mind and matter. Hence, that which
is _not matter_ is _mind_. Nothing else is left for it.
We may wriggle at this terminus as much as we like, but there is no
dodging it. It may be said, for instance, that, while we _know_ and
_experience_ nothing but mind and matter (including with matter its
phenomenal vistas, space and time), we can _imagine something_ else than
either; and, during the past fifty years, this nonsense has found lodgment
in some heads. Now I can imagine _anything_, in the meaning that I can
arbitrarily produce some foolish _fancy_. I can imagine a white blackbird,
with his tail-feathers on his head. But I cannot imagine even this
self-evident contradiction as a thing of neither mind nor matter. What is
an object of "imagination" in the meaning of fancy? It may be empty of
matter, and so unlike the white blackbird. But _no_ object of imagination
can be empty of mind. Imagination is itself an act of mind; hence every
possible product of imagination must partake of mind. If, therefore, I
imagine something apart from mind and matter, it must still spring from
mind, contain mind, and so _not_ be apart from mind. The "_reductio ad
absurdum_" can be had cheap and sure, just where it is most needed.
After Immanuel Kant had once and for good dissected the universe, it seems
a pity that he declined to put his findings together, and take the last
logical step of his magnificent demonstrations. As a requisite, perhaps,
to his microscopic analysis of human subjectivity, he declined to
generalize his own discoveries. In short, Kant's synthesis was Hegel. But
Hegel we need not follow, as our short cut to him, through the solution of
noumena, is worth more, as yet, than the whole German tour of
"post-Kantean philosophy."
Very early in his work Kant said:
"There are two sources of human knowledge (which probably spring from _a
common, but to us unknown root_), namely, sense and understanding. By the
former, objects are _given_ to us; by the latter, _thought_."
Dissecting, with Kant, the nature of "understanding," we have discovered
in it the unal form of all our re-presentations--of every perceptible and
conceivable objected fact. Dissecting "sense," with the same instructor,
we have found it to be certain modes of mental susceptibility, its
physical organs being nothing but relations between susceptible awareness
and the noumenal unknown, like all the rest of "matter." Led, once more,
by our Professor straight up to this noumenal unknown, where _he_ willed
to stop and turn his back on it, we have only had to _look_, in order to
see it collapse into the self-retention of Spirit--spirit _out_ of _us_,
but still _in itself_, and thus going to make up the totality of Spiritual
Being. We have thus found the "one common root" of all knowledge and all
things. But we have touched, also, the apex of thought, and can now see
what is meant--really and fully meant--by "_absolute idealism_."
Absolute Idealism is not merely a phrase; it is a grand and glorious fact.
Immersed in matter, stuck in our senses, we may insist on looking at
sensuous phenomena as our friend John Jasper looked at the sun, with
honest contempt for Copernicus and Newton. "De earf do _not_ move roun' de
sun," exclaimed the sturdy preacher, "but de bressed sun move roun' de
earf. Dere she go now: don't I see her wi' dese very eyes?" Parson Jasper
did see the sun moving round the earth, and in the same way we all see the
objects of our senses existing in perfect independence of ourselves.
Still, as surely as astronomy has proved the delusion of taking the sun's
movement from the eye, philosophy, with the aid of "practical science,"
has proved the delusion of taking objective re-presentations as not
constructed through subjective being. The inevitable end of this proof is
the dissolution of noumena as anything "material," and the inclusion of
all things in Universal Spirit. Of such spirit, finite subjectivity is a
function--a necessary participative reflex, through which the Universal
Spirit is life, manifestation, self-evolution.