Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge Part 6

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 a.s.sociate 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 ma.s.s 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 trans.m.u.tation--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 ent.i.tled to, and all I can, without hopeless contradiction, postulate as real thing existing independently of my perception, is a trans.m.u.tation of Energy. This energy is imperceptible, unextended, unfigured, yet it is by no means a mere logical or mental necessity or a.s.sociative 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 trans.m.u.tation in part constantly changing but with relatively permanent and recurrent elements? These more permanent elements const.i.tute 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 trans.m.u.tation 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 a.n.a.logy, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 trans.m.u.tation, and (2) the indestructibility of the Energy to the trans.m.u.tations of which we attribute the forces of Cohesion and Gravitation.

All vital activity is but a producing of changes in the stream of trans.m.u.tation. We never do, nor in the nature of things do we ever try to, increase or diminish the quant.i.ty 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 trans.m.u.tation-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 ill.u.s.trated 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 a.s.surance, 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.serts 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 trans.m.u.tations 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 a.s.sistance 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 trans.m.u.tations of a real substance itself unextended and unperceived; that the laws of these trans.m.u.tations are what const.i.tute the geometric all-containing s.p.a.ce; that at a point in this real energetic system organically related to the intelligent self, the trans.m.u.tations occurring there const.i.tute the individual's sensible experience; that his mind, by also actively influencing the system at that point, can stimulate the train of trans.m.u.tations which const.i.tute his world of ideas; that the mind can discover itself as Will influencing trans.m.u.tations in the organism which are transmitted through a wider, larger portion of the system; and can recognise the trans.m.u.tations 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 trans.m.u.tations which const.i.tute actuality, and that, on the other hand, the Ideal only enters experience as the regulative principle of the ever-trans.m.u.ting 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 trans.m.u.tations 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 trans.m.u.tations of Energy. It postulates Energy as the Real Ent.i.ty in terms of which it can frame a satisfactory theory of dynamical phenomena.

The metaphysical labours of the century which has elapsed since Kant have not been altogether in vain. The deeper thinkers are pretty nearly agreed that the Absolute is not to be identified with its appearances.

How far they can bring home this view in practical form to the intelligence of man is another matter. Plato doubtless saw the truth in a sort of beatific vision, but the tide of speculation ebbed after his death, and its healing waters never inundated the deserts of mediaeval thought. The discursive weakness in which the speculation of the transcendental Philosophy seems to dissipate itself makes us fear a similar decline. Metaphysics must receive the a.s.sistance of the great speculative achievement of Physics. It must realise that Science can postulate a Reality unperceived and unqualified by the conditions of sense, but in terms of which Science can explain the whole phenomena of the sensible presentation in their objective aspect,--explain these as trans.m.u.tations of Reality, proceeding in accordance with the general mathematical laws under which Reality trans.m.u.tes itself.

It may be said that reason requires us to think that the Universe is a unity. Where do you embrace within Reality, in such a view of it, Intelligence, Volition, Feeling? We answer: Of course, obviously Reality, as postulated by Physics, does not contain these. But the Real Thing postulated by Physics is but one aspect of the whole, and may be, must be, merged in a higher Reality--of which phenomena, on the one hand, and Thought, Conation, Feeling on the other, are the appearances.

That involves a further advance, the attainment of a higher degree of Truth which would bridge the Dualism of Thought and Existence, of Self and Not-self, of Spirit and Nature, and whilst, on the one hand, such Reality must fundamentally be a-logical, on the other hand Energy may owe its energy to Spirit.

In the dualism which we must, in experience, recognise, we notice one fundamental distinction: quantification, measurability, appear the attributes of the physical; quality, ideality, of the spiritual. The apprehension, therefore, of the doctrine of Energy should accomplish in clarity and security the abolition of the intolerable contradictions which have hitherto involved the search for Reality amid its appearances. We think it suggests the most satisfying explanation of the distinction which separates, and the principle which relates Ideality and Externality, and should obviate the almost childish efforts of transcendentalists to expound the relation of the Mind to a body which is involved in, and which is yet--for the individual--distinguished, they cannot tell us how, from the whole system of Nature.

Of course, neither Thought nor Volition, as such, can be the absolute Reality. They, like Physical Force, are but trans.m.u.tations, affections, phases of Reality. Nor, again, is Energy, as a quality, a correct description of the Absolute, as such. The Absolute, as such, we cannot describe; but in studying, as Physics does, the relations of physical phenomena and stating these in terms of Reality, it conveniently gives Reality a name appropriate to its own standpoint.

Metaphysics rightly declines to be required to study special branches of Science. Nothing but grotesque absurdity ensues when this precaution is overlooked. Yet Metaphysics has. .h.i.therto thought itself the better of a little logic, and in the future it will have to grasp the scientific conception of Reality. There is nothing else for it; and, after all, it is remarkable how far the most fundamental conceptions of Metaphysics are dependent on a physical origin.

Surely it is of primary importance to realise the effect upon our conceptions of s.p.a.ce and Extension of the doctrine of the trans.m.u.tations of Energy. Even the profoundest metaphysicians have seemingly failed to explain how s.p.a.ce, Matter, and Extension are related with Reality. You cannot ignore this difficulty by saying that these are the working conceptions of particular branches of Physical Science. But when you realise that physical phenomena, even the most permanent and rigid, are by scientific demonstration but trans.m.u.tations of the real thing, you may then understand that s.p.a.ce, Body, and Extension are but the laws and conditions of the process. As appearances, and within the realm of phenomena, they seem still what they have always seemed. So much we still concede without diminution or obscurity; and at the same time we can harmonise them as they could never be harmonised before with postulated Reality.

It is the same with Time. The facts of memory would seem to imply that there is no succession in the Absolute. We are always present at all times of our life. In recollecting a past event we are contemplating no mere image, but the actual past event itself. Our chronometry depends on the annual motion of the Earth round the Sun. It has thus a purely physical basis.

We might ill.u.s.trate the application of the doctrine of Energy to every department of Metaphysics. But such is not the object of the present essay. We merely desire to indicate briefly some of the many aspects of the theory, and if only we have been able to suggest a line of inquiry, the primary object of this essay has been attained.

FOOTNOTES:

[81:1] Originally printed in 1898, now revised and rewritten.