Were the law of the conservation of energy really a law abstracted from
experiences and absolutely valid, it would be proven by the complete
passing over, without any remainder, of one phenomenon of life into
another; as, for instance, by the transformation of a process of heat
into a process of motion; and physics would have a right to draw the
conclusion of an analogy between this and other processes. The play of
world-events as pure relation-values, its potential comprehensibility,
would be proven by a single transformation without residue, of heat
into motion and motion back into heat--that is, by a single _completely
reversible process_.
But the idea of reversible processes has practical and theoretical
possibility only in an absolutely closed system. Such a thing, however,
is not to be had in the world of actuality. All things here, without
exception, stand in relation to one another, and these mutual relations
do not admit of total suspension even for a single moment of time.
Thus at no time can one get anything but approximately closed systems;
therefore at no time can one attain to anything but approximately
correct results. Every attempt to demonstrate practically a completely
reversible process works with minimum losses, which the physicist, to
be sure, lays to the charge of the procedure adopted, but which the
thinker is equally justified in interpreting as a _loss_ of energy.
No matter what the exactitude with which the experiment is carried
out, no matter how small in value the loss, it is always there; _there
is no such thing as a completely reversible process!_ One can only
derive a law of the conservation of energy from the facts, if for
thought the same is already given. From experiments alone, inductively,
it would be as impossible to arrive at a law of the conservation of
energy as it would be to arrive at the concept of the circle solely
from the concept of the polygon. The circle must be given beforehand
as ultimate concept (_Grenzbegriff_); and in exactly the same way the
law of the conservation of energy must be given beforehand as ultimate
concept (_Grenzbegriff_), if the experiments are to lead up to it.
Thus it was with Robert Mayer’s great intuition: it was a thing given.
And this intuition was taken up by science and worked out, because
here was given it a means of proving with scientific appliances the
impossibility of a _perpetuum mobile_. Perpetual motion, however, is
the violation of the law of adequate cause, transferred to the domain
of the physical.
That is one side of the matter. The other is that the law of the
conservation of energy conformable with its nature, can only possess
validity in the domain of processes reversible and not dependent upon
time, for in a non-reversible process there would lie no possibility
whatever of its proof.
Here this is quite enough to signalize the nature of the law of the
conservation of energy. In the conception of the play of world-events
as yielded by this law, the physicist turns his eyes entirely away from
the real, active energies of the play of world-events. He confines
himself entirely to what is exhibited to sense, the motions; he takes
them for the forces themselves, but is entitled to do so only so long
as he keeps clear before him the fact that it is only a _reading_ that
is in question, and derives therefrom what alone can be derived--_work
done_. Work done, however, is not energy itself but the reaction from
energies. And that which the physicist calls the “world-picture of
energetics” is, in point of fact, void of all energies. The entire
world-picture of energetics is no _actual_ thing but, in the strictest
sense, a thing _re-actual_,--if such a word may be coined--which as
such has no title whatever to be used as a world-theory. Should,
nevertheless, this occur, then those consequences follow about which we
shall speak later.
So long as science abides by actuality she can say nothing else but
that every attempt to trace back completely one phenomenon of life to
another--that is, to represent the play of world-events in the form of
pure relation-values--slips into an endless series; and what is most
of all worthy of remark, each member of this endless series is itself
in turn the point of departure for a new endless series, so that in
the last analysis the fact of this limitless comprehensibility of the
phenomena of life remains as the one real problem of science. And every
science that is in earnest, and does not merely seek to avail itself
of technique, at the very outset must ask itself the question, This
limitless onward movement which every point of departure yields, start
where we may, has it or has it not a conclusion?
To be able to judge of that one must possess some firm standing-ground
from which to look out and see whether this unceasing progression
really is progress. On this journey upon the high seas of knowledge
one must have a landmark by which to steer. Such a possibility,
however, is excluded, and excluded by science itself. For, as
already said, science as such has standing only where the hypothesis
of potential comprehensibility, of the absence of all that is not
perceptible to sense holds good; in other words, where the play
of world-events admits of being resolved without remainder into
relation-values. Such a landmark, however, could only be something
which itself did not admit of being resolved into pure relation-values,
but was a constant in itself, an unconditioned constant. Were science,
however, to admit the existence of such a “something,” she would be
cutting the ground from under her own feet. The whole value of science,
as such, resides in its pure relativity, in the liability of its
values; even as the value of faith resides in the fixity of its one
value.
From all this it follows that in science itself absolutely nothing
can be found that might serve it to prove whether or not there is
genuine progress toward knowledge--that is, whether all these endless
series, which every experiment and every piece of thought opens up,
do or do not proceed toward a final conclusion. At this stage one
view of the matter has precisely as much justification as the other;
an _ignorabimus_ just as much and just as little value as the most
flamboyant optimism. We cannot know. It is, so to speak, entirely a
matter of taste as to the sense in which one chooses to interpret these
endless series.
In full consonance with this is the value which science possesses in
relation to morality and religion.
Whoso will give mankind morality and religion, must give it something
in which it can find support. Both morality and religion at bottom
are nothing but a support in the wide waste of infinitudes. Every
thinking man craves for such a support. If it is lacking, then for the
real thinker a condition supervenes that is all as unbearable as that
physical one, when for the moment a person has lost all possibility of
learning the lie of his surroundings, as, for instance, when he wakes
up confused out of a deep sleep and does not know how to find his way
anywhere. Here as there it is the pure anguish of thought that comes
over us in such a condition, an anguish that will not let us rest
until we have again constructed the mental support, again established
continuity in thought with the whole.
If faith fabricates this support in a manner contrary to sense, and
consequently projects in consonance with her nature a morality and
religion that are contrary to sense, science as a whole on its part
is nothing but the attempt to fabricate for itself a support in law.
Scientific law, however, yields a support solely with reference to a
theory of knowledge. Hence never under any circumstances can science
project moral and religious values. It would be a contradiction of her
own nature. Could she do so, she would no longer be science--_i.e._
_the_ form of mental life which _must_ comprehend the entire play
of world-events in the form of relation-values. Where there exists
nothing but relation-values, there can exist no support in itself,
and therefore no morality or religion. Science is _a-moral_ and
_a-religious_; and the layman as well as the scientist himself ought
ever to keep this clearly before his mind. The efforts made in our day
to carve out, so to speak, the results of science to suit religious
ends as modern monism seeks to do, only go to show how necessary is
such an admonition. From the continuity of life, expounded in the
materialistic sense as a cell, men seek to deduce the idea that we
ourselves live on in the generations to come, somewhat as the manure
lives on in the plant it has manured. But these are such playthings of
thought as only are possible where one is operating with what is wholly
divorced from actuality, that is, with the empty concept of “life.”
To seek to derive moral and religious values from science is, as the
Indian saying has it, “to milk the bull by the horns.”
Now both faith and science alike have the same starting-point--the
thing given, the world. The question then arises, “How can it be
possible that with reference to this given thing, each should take up
such a directly opposite position? How comes it that the one apprehends
the adequate cause of the play of world-events as a pure absolute,
while the other apprehends it as a pure relative?”
At this point we come face to face with the Buddha-thought and its
significance for mental life.