Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge Part 3

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 const.i.tuted 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 const.i.tuents of Science from the const.i.tution 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 a.s.similated 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 pa.s.sive 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 a.s.sociate 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 ma.s.ses are rigid in respect only of the constancy of the dynamic process of trans.m.u.tation 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 trans.m.u.tation which _const.i.tute_ the organism.

But superimposed upon these there are our voluntary exertional activities. By these latter we necessarily mingle with and indeed partic.i.p.ate 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 partic.i.p.ate 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 ma.s.ses--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 const.i.tuents 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 const.i.tute 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 const.i.tuent 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 sh.o.r.e. But we must not mistake the turnings for the roadway nor the sh.o.r.e 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 att.i.tude 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 trans.m.u.tation 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 trans.m.u.tation the interruption of which in one form or another may originate Sensation. It follows that the world of spatially extended bodies is a h.o.m.ogeneous and consistent whole, reflecting in its laws and forms the real operations by which it is const.i.tuted 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.

Undoubtedly, so far as we are aware, the most valuable contribution to this aspect of the discussion is to be found in a little volume recently published in Paris under the t.i.tle _Le Monde des Aveugles_. The author, M. Pierre Villey, is himself blind. In the interests of Science he has cast aside the delicacy and reserve which have generally prevented the blind from a.n.a.lysing or at least from discussing the import of their experiences. He is also fortunately possessed of a philosophic and highly cultivated intellect, and has not failed to make himself acquainted with the general course of metaphysical speculation.

The present writer has been in correspondence with M. Villey, whose conclusions remarkably confirm the view for which this essay contends, and he finds that M. Villey recognises the truth of that view.