In a criticism of the writer's essay onThe Dynamic Foundation of Knowledgein theRevue neo-scolastiqueof Louvain, the critic wrote as follows: "Remarquons qu'il n'a pas compris la synthèse scolastique du moyen âge, elle qui cependant a concilié d'une façon admirable l'actuelet lepotentieldans l'explication de la nature des choses. Il s'est mepris aussi sur les caractères de la méthode scolastique de connaître la constitution intime du monde experimental; il croît cette méthode exclusivement deductive."We have felt that candour demanded that we should quote the foregoing passage—coming as it does from a source exceptionally well qualified to express an opinion. If we have nevertheless allowed ourselves in the precedent paragraphs of this essay to express again the view which this critic seeks to qualify, but which we still think in the main sound, we are at the same time very glad to be able in this way to invite attention to the undoubted fact that the distinction between the actual and the potential was recognised by the schoolmen as of a very deep significance. We believe further that the real secret of the failure of mediævalism to extend its Knowledge of Nature was not so mucha preference for deductive over inductive methods as the failure to realise that Nature was a dynamic operation.
In a criticism of the writer's essay onThe Dynamic Foundation of Knowledgein theRevue neo-scolastiqueof Louvain, the critic wrote as follows: "Remarquons qu'il n'a pas compris la synthèse scolastique du moyen âge, elle qui cependant a concilié d'une façon admirable l'actuelet lepotentieldans l'explication de la nature des choses. Il s'est mepris aussi sur les caractères de la méthode scolastique de connaître la constitution intime du monde experimental; il croît cette méthode exclusivement deductive."
We have felt that candour demanded that we should quote the foregoing passage—coming as it does from a source exceptionally well qualified to express an opinion. If we have nevertheless allowed ourselves in the precedent paragraphs of this essay to express again the view which this critic seeks to qualify, but which we still think in the main sound, we are at the same time very glad to be able in this way to invite attention to the undoubted fact that the distinction between the actual and the potential was recognised by the schoolmen as of a very deep significance. We believe further that the real secret of the failure of mediævalism to extend its Knowledge of Nature was not so mucha preference for deductive over inductive methods as the failure to realise that Nature was a dynamic operation.
It is important, then, to understand accurately what is the method of Science.
The external world of our Experience seems to be composed of sensible impressions. The ever present visual panorama combined with the constant occurrence of other sensations suggests that Nature is, as has so often been asserted, simply another name for the sensible presentation. A truer view of Nature was adumbrated by Aristotle when he formulated the theory of an Energy ever generative of the sensible. If the founders of Science did not fully grasp the Aristotelian conception, it is at least certain that they looked upon Nature not merely as a sensible presentation but as a process—a dynamic operation. It was to the study of these operations, to the measurement of the natural forces or normal categories of physical action that Galileo and Newton devoted themselves. The true estimate of a moving force may indeed be said to have been their first great problem, just as the law of universal gravitation was their grandest generalisation.
It was to this sure instinct that the founders ofScience owed their success. Had they devoted themselves to the mere study of sensations—of blue things and green things, of hard things and soft things, of loud things and silent things—Science as an efficient and co-ordinated system would never have come into being.
Having struck the right path, they moved rapidly along it, leaving the Schoolmen and Philosophers behind them, suspicious, hostile, and amazed.
But Philosophy did not remain altogether negative. The new movement extended itself to Metaphysics, and under the leadership of Descartes a resolute effort was made to reform Philosophy on sympathetic lines.
It was in the true spirit of Socrates that Descartes advanced his famous method of Doubt. The whole fabric of beliefs and rational principles was to be subjected to a re-examination, and Descartes found himself on bedrock when he touched his famousCogito, ergo sum.The simple fact or act of Doubt implied the Activity—the Reality therefore—of the Doubter. But the cogitant subject was reduced very much to the condition of atabula rasa, and when Descartes proceeded to fill up the blank with a rediscovery on more scientific lines of the essentials of Cognition he found his basal feature in Extension.Tridimensional Space seemed the simple elementary framework of our Knowledge of Nature.
The method of Descartes was further extended by the English philosopher Locke. Those qualities which formed the elements of Knowledge were described by him as the primary qualities of body; the sensible presentation comprised also the secondary qualities which seemed to be in some way superposed upon and contained within the former.
Our fundamental ideas of Nature were called by Locke sensible ideas. These ideas were derived from our sensible Experience, and it is only just to Locke to point out that, when examined in detail, his sensible ideas are seen to be not mere qualifications of sensation, but rather the elementary characters of Nature viewed as a dynamic process and discovered by our Activity. Yet the ambiguous termsensible ideasunfortunately led to their being regarded as ideas derived, not from our action in any form, but from pure sensation alone.
This extraordinary error was intensified in the speculation of Berkeley and Hume. Experience with them appeared to consist solely of a succession of sensations appearing to, impressing, or affecting atabula rasaof consciousness.
Of course in such a state of affairs all Knowledge would be impossible. The scepticism which logically followed from such a doctrine was too universal to be capable even of the fiction that it was credible. Berkeley, it is true, endeavoured to save the situation by postulating the incessant and immediate intervention of the Deity as the sustainer of the sensible panorama. This purely arbitrary and fictitious expedient was entirely rejected by Hume, who with fearless honesty carried to its ultimate results the direct consequences of the doctrine and then complacently left human Knowledge to take care of itself.
A masterly protest against the position of Hume was made by his countryman Reid, who in hisInquiry into the Human Mindvery clearly pointed out the fundamental difference between the sensible accompaniments or constituents of our Experience and the real and independently existent substratum by which that Experience is sustained and organised. His argument, though it attracted considerable attention, did not, however, affect as deeply as might have been expected the future of philosophic speculation, probably because he offered no new clue or key whereby to detect the origin and account for the presence in our Experience of those enduring andsubstantial elements or forms by which it is sustained, but on the contrary left their recognition to what he rather vaguely described as common sense.
Much more influential was the elaborate answer of Kant, which has profoundly affected the course of Metaphysics since its publication. Reverting in principle to the platonic method, Kant again sought the enduring elements, the fundamentals of Science, in the constitution of the cognitive faculty itself. But very differently from Plato he discovered these in the categories or essential forms of intellective action,—the category of causality and dependence and the so-called forms of the transcendental æsthetic—Time and Space. Under these categories the indefinite data of sensation were thought to be organised into a cognisable system.
A rapid advance of speculation along the lines signalised by Kant took place after his work was published, and for many years this movement was regarded by a large part of the speculative world as the most hopeful and progressive of philosophic efforts, and by its own votaries as placing them in a position of superiority to all other schools of thought. The thoroughness of their studies and introspective methods to some extent justified, or at least excused the arrogance of their pretensions.
But it is to-day almost unnecessary even to criticise this Philosophy.
From the first it was foredoomed to failure, and had no prospect of succeeding where Plato—equipped with armour from the same forge—had already failed.
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 constituted 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 morethan 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 constituents of Science from the constitution 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 unstableappears 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 ortabula 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 assimilated 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 evenby 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 passive 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 associate 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.
Nowthefundamental, or at leastafundamental 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 masses are rigid in respect only of the constancy of the dynamic process of transmutation 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 ofHeracleitus, 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 itoperates. 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,isan 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 usthe 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 transmutation whichconstitutethe organism.
But superimposed upon these there are our voluntary exertional activities. By these latter we necessarily mingle with and indeed participate 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 participate 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 masses—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 toproceed at once to a rational explanation of Sensation.
Sensation isobstructed action. A detailed consideration of as many as you like to take of the myriad constituents 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 Realityisapprehended, 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 constitute 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 constituent 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 shore. But we must not mistake the turnings for the roadway nor the shore 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 tofollow 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 attitude 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 reallypartof a largerwhole. Our exertional action isab initiomingled 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 transmutation 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 isorganically onewith 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 theseconstancies. Buta material body, when its sensible concomitants are abstracted, is nothing more than a permanent process of energy transmutation the interruption of which in one form or another may originate Sensation. It follows that the world of spatially extended bodies is a homogeneous and consistent whole, reflecting in its laws and forms the real operations by which it is constituted 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 ofExperience 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 titleLe 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 analysing 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. Individual quotations would only detract from the cumulative effect of his argument, but we may refer in particular to the interestingdiscussion as to the relations between the space concepts of the blind and those of the vident. The blind can be taught, and are taught, geometry, and can discuss and understand spatial and geometrical problems. The sensible furniture by which the spatial conceptions of the blind are denoted obviously cannot be visual, and are no doubt largely tactual, whilst on the other hand the vident utilise the visual data to the almost total exclusion of any other. There must therefore be some common measure by means of which a community is established between the spatial conceptions of the blind and those of the vident. M. Villey concludes and clearly shows that the common medium is to be found in the fact that our spatial conceptions are fundamentally based upon and are expressive of the discoveries of our exertional activity. Touch, in short, is an ambiguous term and includes both passive sensations and those forms of Activity which we describe when we use the term "feel" as a transitive verb. Just as we distinguish between seeing and looking or between hearing and listening, so should we distinguish between touch passive and touch active or palpation.
The view of Science which we have endeavouredto explain has received a notable confirmation from the establishment during the latter part of the nineteenth century of the scientific doctrine of Energy.[69:1]
The culmination of the scientific fabric of which Galileo and Newton laid the foundations was reached when it was demonstrated that the whole physical universe must be regarded as composed of Energy, either kinetic and actually undergoing transmutation from one form to another, or potential and quiescent yet containing within itself the quantifiable capacity of transformation. The objective correlatives of the different classes of sensible experiences are found to be different forms which this Energy assumes—the kinetic energy of a mass in motion, the radiant energy of Light, the energy of Heat, the potential energy of chemical separation, etc.—all these have now at length been shown to be forms of one real thing capable under appropriate conditions of being transmuted into each other and of which not only the inter-transmutability but the equivalent values can be calculated and have been found by experiment to be fixed and definite. Thus the mechanical equivalent of heat is a fixed anddefinite quantity. The Energy of a body in motion can be measured and stated in terms of mass and velocity.
The profound conception of Aristotle, under which Nature was regarded as a potent Energy containing within itself the capacity of generating the phenomenal World, has again been revived and realised—but with great additions. The theory in the hands of Science is now not only confirmed by incessant experiment, but the relation which it affirms between reality and phenomenon has beenquantified.
Moreover, the actual operations under which the potential generates the actual have, so to say, been laid bare to view; and lastly, the inter-transmutability of all forms of Energy and its real unity have been established.
The doctrine has therefore received a confirmation of which Aristotle did not dream, and its explanation has at the same time received an illumination which his vague if profound adumbration could never afford. With this added support the true conception of human knowledge has received new strength. The theory is still, nevertheless, not to be grasped without a resolute effort of reflection. It involves an inversion of our everyday conceptions more radical than that which was demanded bythe Copernican theory of astronomy, and we know that that theory—offered to and rejected by mankind before the beginning of the Christian era—had to wait through sixteen or seventeen hundred years before it secured an acceptance, at first grudging and even now not always adequate.
The ordinary metaphysical student has hitherto rather resented the idea that in order to a true solution of the problem of Knowledge he must acquaint himself with the fundamental conceptions of physics. Yet so it is. It may perhaps be hoped that when the first strangeness of the new position has disappeared the conditions may be accepted with greater readiness. At any rate, a correct apprehension of our fundamental conceptions of the world of our external experience is indispensable. No theory can wholly dispense with such conceptions. It is therefore essential that, however elementary, they should be clear and not contradictory. Philosophy has always vaguely realised and exacted as much. The need is now imperative.
Some years ago, in an essay on Schopenhauer, the author, Mr. Saunders, remarked, "How the matter of which my arm is composed and that state of consciousness which I call my Will [imagine anyone calling Will a state of consciousness!] areconjoined is a mystery beyond the reach of Science, and the man who can solve it is the man for whom the world is waiting."
Well, if that be so, then the world need not wait any longer. The required explanation is offered to metaphysics by the scientific work of the physicians who built up and consolidated the modern doctrine of Energy. It is true that most of them have continued to postulate the reality of material bodies. For their purpose there was no real difficulty in doing so. What they required was a datum of configuration, a phenomenal basis upon which their calculations could proceed and in terms of which, as a point of origin, their statement of transmutations was made. The persistence of material bodies is a condition precedent to the phenomenal manifestations in which our Experience arises. Organic existence in every form and the world in which it arises presuppose the actuality of these. But dynamically they are merely the phenomenal result of certain permanent forces constantly in operation. To beings, if there be such, inhabiting the Ether there is little doubt but that a gravitation system like that of the sun and its planets must present a corporate rigidity and identity somewhat similar to that which cohering masses present to our intelligence. But,in terms of reality, Energy, potential and kinetic, containing within itself the potency which generates the actual and sustains the constant transmutation in which phenomena arise is the sole and only postulate.
The rise of meta-geometrical methods and other branches of scientific speculation have led in recent years to a considerable amount of very interesting inquiry into the nature of our fundamental geometrical conceptions. Strange to say, a large body of respectable mathematicians have been found to favour the extraordinary view that our mathematical conceptions are derived from Sensation. We do not propose here to discuss at length this idea. It is merely another form of the old sensationalist view of Knowledge, but we suggest that the conditions of the problem will readily appear in their true light and real nature whenever such inquirers realise the fact that our exertional activity is the source of our cognitions of the external, and that therefore our pure exertional activity is the source of the basal concepts of geometry.
Here lies the root of the distinction between pure and empirical science. The propositions of geometry, being derived from our own pure activity, are of the former class; the inductive conclusions of physical experimental science, being gatheredby observation and measurement from sensible data, are empirical and approximate. A geometrical proposition—such, for example, as the assertion that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles—is not merely approximate. It has no dependence on measurement. It is absolutely true. It is ascertained deductively, and therefore measurement is not involved, and is never employed. Its truth is not ascertained by measurement. It is not verified by measurement. It in no degree depends upon the sensible figure. It is equally true for every human being whatever be the degree of accuracy of the figure by the aid of which he studies it, or indeed whether he studies it by figure or otherwise, as must necessarily be the case with the born blind.
There may be many different forms of energetic transmutation which may determine many other forms of space besides that form of tridimensional space in which our Activity is involved. For such, a different geometry may and will be applicable; but for the tridimensional conditions ofour activitythe proposition is necessary and absolute. No measurement of any stellar parallax, however minute and whatever the result might be, could have any bearing on its truth. Geometry is the science of the pure forms of our motor activity amidst corporeal bodies.
A useful illustration of our argument is to be drawn from a consideration of the question of phonetic spelling. Occasionally we find persons urging that all spelling should be an exact reproduction of sound. Indeed, an improved alphabet has been designed to enable the idea to be carried out with greater accuracy.
Now it is quite true that it is by their sound that we recognise or denote our words. Hence our alphabet was originally phonetic in principle, and indeed still is so, although the correspondence is imperfect. As the use of visible signs develops spelling seems to fall into certain fixed frames and to deviate more and more from pure phonetic simplicity. But why is this so? It is because the sounds are merely the symbols or indicators of the different forms of vocal articulation (vocal acts), and it is really as the symbols and indicators of these actions that they possess any meaning and acquire such permanence and identity as they have. The phonetic system, therefore, becomes in use subordinated to the expression of the acts by which are produced these radical vocables which constitute the essentials of rational Discourse.
In all this the process of the expression of words in spelling is a microcosmic counterpart of the process of cognition as we have tried to explain it.
It is noteworthy that the same thing necessarily happens in the case of any new system of spelling.
The most prominent advocates of phonetic spelling have been also the authors of a system of phonetic shorthand.
Like the written and printed alphabet of Europe, the alphabet of Phonography was made phonetic. Indeed it started off as a more nearly perfect phonetic system than the ordinary European alphabet. But as its use advances its employment undergoes the same change. The phonetic symbols are abbreviated by grammalogues and contractions, and this proceeds in accordance with a principle unconsciously recognised but which really depends on the same inherent necessity to preserve in a consistent form the expression of the radical vocables of Speech. Finally, in the hands of the expert stenographer the system of phonetic shorthand (though he still uses the sound as the guide and indicator of his actions) is as far removed from a pure phonetic representation as the ordinary method of spelling. Indeed, unless some such suprasensible and unifying principle were available, phonetic spelling would speedily perish in an infinity of degenerate variations.
We adduce this illustration as one which very well confirms our main argument. We have nodesire to discuss on its merits the general question of Spelling Reform, which of course is quite apart from the attempt to establish a scheme of spelling on a purely phonetic basis. A more rational system of spelling is nevertheless an object worthy of all consideration.
Intellectualism and sensationalism have both broken down. The world of speculation is anxiously looking for a new clue. Witness the pathetic eagerness with which it clutches at every floating straw. The innumerable "isms" by which it seeks ever and anon to keep itself afloat are most of them but the sometimes unrecognisable wreckage of the old systems drifting about under very inappropriate names. Such terms as Realism and Idealism are freely used (generally prefixing the adjective "new") by writers in philosophic periodicals in a sense which might make Plato, Aquinas, or Kant turn in their graves.
We see their votaries encumbered with the trappings of a futile erudition of the insignificant or clinging pathetically to the insecure relics of teleological doctrine, or, still less virile, seeking support in a return to the unscientific tales of supernatural spiritualism. Such efforts are vain.
Only by facing the facts with all theirconsequences, whatever these may be and whatever they may involve for the proudest aspirations of mankind—only thus can truth be attained. And lest any should say that we preach an unrelieved pessimism, let us remind such that Knowledge is not after all the source of Life, that another category and a different principle—that, namely, which we indicate under the term Love-divine—must have generated the potent current of Life, and that no one should close the door against the hopes of the human Intelligence until he has discovered what are the limits imposed upon what Perfect Love can do.
The question still remains whether mankind will be equal to the effort required to assimilate the essential truth. They very nearly failed to assimilate the Copernican cosmogony. For sixteen hundred years after it was first offered to mankind the race preferred to grope in the darkness and confinement of a false conception.
If they succeed in accomplishing the reception of the new truth, unheard-of progress may be looked for. If they fail, civilisation must disappear and humanity decline. There is no middle course. As Bacon remarked, in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only to God and angels to be lookers-on.
We know how stubbornly the Ptolemaic cosmogonystill clings to our conceptions, how largely it still dominates—or till recently did dominate—the religious cosmography of the most civilised peoples.
In Philosophy our leading teachers seem as yet to have a very feeble appreciation of the new conditions. They turn greedily to the eloquent pages ofL'Evolution créatrice, but however earnestly they search they cannot find there any definite solution of the difficulties of the age-old problem. They wander wearily through the mazes of psychological detail or wage almost childish logomachies over the interpretation of each other's essays. Philosophical magazines are filled with articles which reflect this state of the philosophic mind. Philosophical congresses meet and argue and go home; Gifford lecturers prelect; yet so far as can be seen there is little sign that the key has been grasped. The great fact remains obscured amidst a mass of words.
The elucidation of the problem of Knowledge demands certain improvements in our philosophic terminology. Language as a rule is a very unerring philosopher, and words shaped and polished by long usage generally express, more truly than those who use them realise, the essential reality of things. Yet these long-enduring errors of the ages which we have been discussing here have left their impress too on the terminology of Metaphysics.
Thought and Action are in common speech contrasted, and the distinction expresses an essential truth. But when we seek to say further that both of these are Activities, we are stating another truth in terms which are hardly consistent with the previously contrasted distinction. It might be better if Action and Active could be applied generally to both and if the termexertioncould be substituted for Action in describing the forms of activity which we denominatemotor. To that suggestion, however, there are also serious objections. The words derived fromagohave historically a special application to the exertional and dynamic. We leave the question to our readers as one of which it is of considerable importance to find a satisfactory solution.
In the foregoing pages our object has been to illustrate the erroneous conceptions by which the theory of human cognition has been obscured and to explain briefly what we conceive to be the true solution. The argument in support of the doctrine here explained has been more fully presented by the present writer in an essay entitledThe Dynamic Foundation of Knowledge, to which the reader who desires to study the question further must now be referred.
[60:1]Κόσμον τόνδε τὸν αὐτὸν ἀπάντωνοὔτε τις Θεῶν οὔτε ἀνθρώπωνἐποίησε, ἀλλ' ἧν αἰεὶ καὶ ἔστι καὶἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον ἁπτόμενον μέτρακαὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα. Quoted by Clement of Alexandria, etc. (The First Philosophers of Greece, by A. Fairbanks, p. 28.)
[60:1]Κόσμον τόνδε τὸν αὐτὸν ἀπάντωνοὔτε τις Θεῶν οὔτε ἀνθρώπωνἐποίησε, ἀλλ' ἧν αἰεὶ καὶ ἔστι καὶἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον ἁπτόμενον μέτρακαὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα. Quoted by Clement of Alexandria, etc. (The First Philosophers of Greece, by A. Fairbanks, p. 28.)