The realistic three-dimensioned space is a combination of the true interval of association and the false interval of perspection. This generates an idea resembling the capacity or vacancy in a room or vessel, and thus it is supposed that objects occupy a sort of universal room without walls, floor, or ceiling. It is however the enclosing objects which make a room, and when they are abstracted there remains nothing. The universal room is therefore nothing—a myth. It is a useful working theory for common purposes, but in philosophy it is superfluous and obstructive.
In the definitions of geometry no difference is made between the depth of a landscape and the 'third dimension' of any small cubic object. They are both called 'third dimension' or 'cubic dimension.' Yet they are inferences of different categories, and neither is real. The former, as we have just seen, is the imagined redintegration of objects perspectively shrunk and defaced. The latter is the imaginary completion of a thing having many surfaces or facets, only one of which can be shown at a time.
Sky Perspection.The effect produced on our mind by the observation of celestial objects, reveals at once the artificiality of cubic space. Clouds in their form and movements are somewhat like earthly things—vapour or mountains,—and so we conceive them partially graduated in distance and floating in a concavity. But whether they are a mile off, or twenty miles off, few of us can tell.
When we contemplate the sun, moon and stars, our realism is completely at fault. These we cannot modify at will, and they move too slowly and present too uniform an aspect to cause the perspective effect. Since we have never seen them at the tactual range we know not to what degree they are perspectively incomplete; hence they appear without relative distance—distance being simply a metaphor of perspective effacement. If 'cubic space' is real, let the realists tell us why we do not see it in the sky—why we donot arrange the stars behind each other according to their calculated distances. This question is unanswerable realistically, but idealistically it presents no difficulty. The sky is not spaced, because the conditions are wanting under which the illusion of terrestrial space is formed in the intellect.
By close instrumental attention to the moon and planets a slight parallax is observable, and on the analogy of terrestrial parallax astronomers are able to calculate what they call the distance of these bodies. Perhaps their calculations are right, but the magnitudes are not conceivable as associative distance, being so much greater than we have any experience of. We take them to mean that the heavenly bodies are extremely degraded, perspectively speaking. Their noumena are in contact with our minds, for this is essential to perception, but if astronomical calculations are correct the contact is infinitely slight, compared with what it would be, supposing—to speak realistically—we could go to the stars or they could be brought to us.
Berkeley'sTheory of VisionandDialoguesare occupied with the analysis of perspection. The arguments he uses to show that distance outwards is not real are in the main those given in this section.
If we take a cricket-ball in the hand and turn it round we shall perceive a series of discs. Only one of these can be seen at a time, but if we perceive and remember the whole series we shall be able to infer all from the perception of one in a similar object. The same occurs with other cubical or solid objects. This is a form of ideal construction different from any we have yet considered. It differs from inherence in that the object which we conceptually put together is never objectively perceived as a whole. It is an imaginary whole constructed in the intellect out of fragmentary experience. It differs from association on the same grounds; the latter can be all perceived at once in forming the judgment. It differs from perspection in that the imperfection of experience is due to curtailment, not to general deterioration. What we actually see may be perspectively perfect. It differs also from the next category in that the series of perceptions can occur in various orders of succession.
The 'backs' of Things.We talk of the back of a thing, but nobody has ever seen a back. Thingshave no backs in the popular sense of the word. When we turn round a back to perceive it, it is then a front. Everything is a flat upright surface, and its appearance of solidity can be imitated on a surface known to be flat, and with nearly the same illusive completeness as in the original object. In turning things round we merely change the surface; we are exercising our power to alter primary consciousness.
When two persons perceive the 'same' object from contrary directions, the sameness means that the two objects proceed from the same cause, or can be reduced to the same general idea. But the objects are numerically distinct. By a similar turn of speech we say that A andaare the sameletter, but they are evidently distinct and dissimilar objects. If we hold a thing before a mirror and see what is termed its back, we produce a new object resembling the first in some respects but without its resistance.
Resistance is a negative term signifying the limit of our power to alter primary experience. Where our power ceases resistance is said to begin, and we meet with resistance when we apply a power inadequate to the desired effect.
Dr. Johnson's solitary experiment in idealistic philosophy has been often related. He struck a post, and because it did not disappear he thought he had disproved Berkeley's statement that material objects exist only in the perceiving mind. Theexperiment merely showed that all means are not adequate to change all primary experience. Had he shut his eyes, or turned a corner, or occupied his attention with other matters, the post would have vanished. He chose improper means and therefore met with 'resistance.' No idealist believes we can change our primary experience by any capricious and frivolous means15.
Geographical Concretion.The knowledge of large geographical areas is an artificial construction without objective reality.
Our experience is, literally and exactly, a series or sequence—a flux or stream. It is composed of objects or of groups, according to the width of our attention. If we travel over a large tract of country the experience is a train of objects or views, which follow each other continuously but for interruptions in attention. If we were bound to think of things in the order in which they were experienced, we should have to imagine our topographical consciousness as a long ribbon of views, like the pictures of a panorama. Supposing we travelled hither and thither over one county, it would appear to us as a straight strip of land which might be several hundred miles long. If we again traversed the ground, but in another order, we should have another strip resembling the first, but also differing from it, and it would be necessary to keep the two from being confused in our mind. If several persons traversed the same ground but in divers directions, they would each retain a differentrecollection of it, and it would be extremely hard for any two of them to agree as to the order in succession of any portion of the ground traversed.
Our experience of the natural group suggests a mode of treating our geographical experience which overcomes many of these inconveniences. We find that we can traverse (either bodily or by the eye) a single landscape in a thousand directions, and retain a memory of it without any reference to these directions. What we remember is the mutual positions of the objects, not the order in which they were observed. As this greatly facilitates the memory of one group, we apply the same principle of synthesis to the succession of groups composing our geographical experience. We dismiss from our minds the order of observation, and construct instead an imaginary group of associated objects or places having mutual positions. It is imaginary, for no one has ever seen as a co-existent synthesis the objects of a county, not to speak of a country or continent. Substituting for memory of succession, a memory of position, there grows up in our mind a large co-existent image of a country on the model of a single group, which affords all the advantages as regards economy of energy which we enjoy by virtue of comprehending a natural group in one act of consciousness.
Take an instance of this economy. Suppose a mantravelled from London to Oxford, then to Exeter, then to Portsmouth, then to Brighton, and afterwards desired to return to London. If he, acting on a mistaken conception of truth and disdaining instruction from others, persisted in remembering the objects perceived on his journey as—what they no doubt literally were—a continuous series, he would be unable to imagine any way of returning to London except by reversing the order of his journey. If on the other hand he carried in his mind an image of the ground in question, with the mutual position of the places, it would enable him toforeseethat London was to be reached by journeying northward from Brighton, in far less time and at far less cost than by returning the way he came. Thus does conceptual position, when it is correctly imagined, prove its superiority to the order of experience. And we say that the ideal picture is truer than the crude memory,—not that it is really so if natural order is a test of truth, but because it is the least onerous, which is our practical standard of truth. The only object of knowledge being the wise management of energy, that sort of knowledge must be considered truest that enables us to have the feelings we desire at the least cost. In one sense truth means the quickest and easiest way of passing from one state of consciousness to another preconceived state.
It may be objected to the above example as a validdeduction from an imaginary synthesis, that the relation of London to Brighton is now a certainty, whereas an inference can be no more than a probability. The reply is, that if a man has already traversed the route in question, it is to him an actual experience and his idea of it is ever afterwards a memory, not an inference. But until it is actually perceived it must be imaginary, and therefore slightly problematical. Although a man is convinced that others are not deceiving him in saying a place is to be reached in a certain way, he cannot be absolutely sure that he fully understands the directions given, in other words, that his image of the route corresponds to their perception of it. There probably never is exact similarity between one man's primary experience and another man's idea of it. It may even be doubted whether there is ever exact similarity between a man's own primary experience and his subsequent idea of it.
The geographical synthesis is founded on actual exploration supplemented by inference. The mutual position of some important places are determined and serve as precedents for a multitude of minor positional deductions.Ais twenty miles north of London,Bis ten miles south of London, henceAis thirty miles north ofB. The mileage is determined by imagining the synthesis developed into natural groups and measured laterally. Other scales are the timespent in travelling between the places, or the money it costs, or the distance delineated on a map.
Though the geographical concretion may be modelled on the association, we cannot treat it perspectively, for the places being purely ideal (except the one we are at), the ideal image is not liable to deterioration by weakened perception. It may suffer degradation by forgetfulness, but that has nothing to do with perspection.
Sphericity of the Earth.The geographical synthesis is not always formed on the pattern of a natural association. That is the first and most obvious shape to give it, and for thousands of years it appears to have answered the topographical needs of mankind. But as exploration extended it was found that the associative theory did not in some cases afford true preconception. If we travel far enough in any fixed direction we shall return to the point from which we started. This could not have been predicted from a synthesis formed on the model of a landscape. Such a return however takes place in the objects denominated spheres, and so the spherical instead of the flat form has been conceptually given to the geographical concretion. That is all that is meant by saying that the world is round. There is no world, as the mystical realist—projecting outwards his mental synthesis—imagines. There is only a scheme of spherical positions in the intellect, which facilitatesthe recollection of places and enables us to foresee the shortest and easiest way of reaching—i.e.experiencing places. The concretion is true inasmuch as the prediction is found to coincide with real experience. But that by no means implies that the places exist except when perceived in minds.
Sequence is a series most resembling a procession of objects in a natural group (second category). It differs therefrom in that the objects cannot be seen together. It differs from concretion in that the order in which the objects appear cannot be altered, or if they are human and alterable we cease to treat them as a sequence. They no longer have the predictive value which moves us to form artificial groups of objects.
Satisfactory examples of reasoning in sequence are less numerous than might be supposed. It is a poor category for argument. Series either occur with perfect regularity, like the seasons of the year, phases of the moon, &c., and then they rapidly become mere recollections and lose the problematical character essential to a true inference, or the connection betweenthe objects is too casual for argumentative purposes. Darwin's theory of the formation of coral atolls is a fine argument in sequence, but the application of this theory to reefs not examined by him is hardly uncertain enough to be an argument. It is the first sequential inference that is valid—the rest are foregone conclusions.
Geology supplies some good sequences. It has been noticed, for instance, that the sea leaves ripple-marks on sandy beaches, and stones with similar marks have been found at a distance from the sea; it is a valid sequential inference that the marks in the latter case have also been formed by the action of the waves. Here the difference in locality between the two compared series—the modern complete and the ancient incomplete—supplies that slight element of doubt essential to an argument.
So as regards the mode of making ancient flint tools: it has been found that tools exactly similar to the ancient can now be made with the simplest possible means, and it is a true argument to infer that the ancient implements were made by these means. The conclusion is highly probable without being infallibly certain, and that is what a dialectical conclusion ought to be.
We may admit that some of the astronomical sequences are forms of reasoning, for they were such to their first discoverers, and to minds not thoroughlyconversant with them they are still in the nature of predictions that might fail of accomplishment. Political, financial, and sporting forecasts are sequential arguments, and we may also include speculations on the future states of all growing organisms and developing institutions.
Time.The intervals between the objects of a sequence are imagined after the model of lateral intervals in association. This is Time. Like space it is mere blanks in experience, though treated by realists as external and self-subsisting. It can be measured by reference to objects on whose sequential recurrence we have the most reliance, such as the phases of the moon, the positions of the sun in the ecliptic, the movements of the hands of a clock or the chiming of its bells. Abstract or unbounded time is called 'eternity'; like abstract space it is a refined form of nothing. Time and space are usually coupled together as if co-ordinate, but eternity is the co-ordinate of space. Time is divided sequence and would correspond to materially divided space, that is, space with objects in it at regular intervals.
Matter, space, and time are the three pillars of the realistic world. We have now seen what they are made of. Matter is a general idea compiled by ourselves from phenomenal consciousness. It is no substance—only an average. Space has even less reality. It is first the interval between two objects inassociation; then this interval is used metaphorically as an expression and measure of perspective decadence. Time is an application of the same associative interval to express the blanks between objects in sequence. Space and time are thus pure nullities—negatives with positive names. These three notions being exploded as entities, there remain as a residuum of true fact and the starting-point of philosophy—minds, theirenergies, and theirconsciousness. This is a very ancient triad.
Science constantly confounds sequence and causation. We are told that the mooncauseseclipses of the sun, that heatcausesobjects to expand, that a sealcausesan imprint. This is a metaphor from human causation, and the expression is now so rooted in language that it would hardly be possible to introduce a more correct phraseology. Yet it is as incorrect as to say that one o'clock causes two o'clock, or that daylight causes darkness. The confusion has arisen from the fact that both sequence and causation deal with fixed inconvertible series, but only in the latter is there real power exerted to produce the effect. Material things and their apparent effects are due to a cause lying behind both.
Causation differs from all other categories in that one of its elements is mental. It is a series beginning in the mind—in this relation denominatedcause—and developing into objective phenomena calledeffectsor an effect. The series being known by judgment we can infer similar causes from perception of similar effects. The commonest causation is the use and interpretation of language. Because we utter words from a certain motive we infer that all who utter the same words do so from the same motive. That is the reason of the intelligibility of words.
This category is peculiar from the extremely narrow range of the experience which supplies the judgments. We never perceive any mind but one—our own—and this has to supply all the judgments by which we reason concerning other minds. There is therefore no category in which correct reasoning is so difficult and so rare. No amount of experience entirely overcomes this defect, for if we are ignorant we cannot understand the wise, and if we are wise we cannot conceive the motives of the ignorant and vicious.Only those persons who are mentally very like each other are mutually comprehensible.
This category has a further peculiarity. In all the rest the inference relates to objective experience, and this being due to interaction of minds we are justified in saying that until it is perceived it has no existence. But in causation we are inferring something with reference to a mind, and this exists though we never can perceive it. We know that minds exist without perception because we know that our own exists though no one perceives us—though we are in total darkness and silence and cannot ourselves perceive our bodies. As already stated, Existence has not the same meaning when applied to objects and to minds, objects being merely temporary conditions of minds. The non-existence of inferred but unperceived objects does not follow from any defect in the faculty of inference, but depends on the essential character of objects. They are created by mutual contact of minds and cannot exist without that condition, however clearly they may be inferred and however correctly their appearance may be predicted.
Causation is confounded with sequence because both are series. Let me illustrate the difference between them by an example. I turn the stop-cock of a pipe, and water flows from the open end of the pipe. In popular and even scientific language itwould be said that I caused the water to flow. But this is incorrect. All I caused was the turning of the tap; that alone was wholly due to my energy and intelligence. There followed as a sequence the outflow of water, but that was due partly to cosmic force and partly to the previous human causation (not mine) implied in making and laying down the pipe so as to utilise the cosmic force. I merely removed an obstacle that prevented the further development of the force in a particular direction. My relation to the outflow was sequence, not causation.
In observation sequence registers fixed or probable series ofobjectswithout regard to their causes. It is sufficient if they occur regularly enough to justify prediction. Causation, on the other hand, pays no regard to physical connection of any sort, but seeks out the being or beings who supplied the energy producing an effect or series of effects. The speculations in causation pass quite beyond the domain of objectivity, over into the realm of true creation.
When we read that 'the succession of events is an endless chain of effects which are in their turn causes of new effects,' what is meant is sequence, and for 'cause' and 'effect' the terms 'antecedent' and 'consequent' should have been employed. Sequences may be 'chains' and may be long, but if so their links have been forged by independent causes actingacrossthe chain; as when a line of soldiers fire insuccession at regular intervals, or as in the case of the moon's quarters. In these instances the objects, although forming a series, has each a cause of its own.
Certainly a causation is a series, for the cause precedes the effect. But an effect is never the cause of a succeeding effect. When this appears to be the case the explanation is that the energy was not exhausted in producing the immediate simple effect, but has produced a complicated effect in which a series may be discovered. An objective effect, being a mere flash of consciousness—a shadow on a window-blind—is incapable of causing anything.
Analysis of Cause.Cause is mind in action. It consists of at least energy and a sentimentalmotive—energy exerted to gratify sentiment. If the mind is intellectualised there will probably be an ideal element in the cause—in this connection calledplanordesign—for the better direction of the energy. Normal human causation consists of an effort of mind directed towards the objective realisation of a plan, for the gratification of a sentiment. This is the same asWILL.
All three elements of cause may be furnished by the same individual—or any two of them—or only one. For instance, the man who wants a house supplies the motive, the architect provides the design, the builder finds the energy.
One plan may use up an indefinite number of separate stores of energy. Even in an individual the realisation of a plan exhausts the powers of millions of organic cells. A military campaign illustrates the relation of plan to power. The design may have been formed by one man, and then communicated wholly or partially to a hundred thousand, and the energies of these may be devoted to its realisation. The soldier fights with his own energy, but he is directed by his commander's idea, or so much of it as has been confided to him. The design may stretch from the commander to the soldier, but not the energy. In order that the commander should be termed the 'cause' of his private's activity, it would be necessary to eliminate the notion of exerted energy from causation, and reduce it to bare communication of design, which would be absurd.
The stretching of one design over many relays of energy has no doubt helped to confirm the notion that causation is a long chain of alternate causes and effects. The truth is that energy can act only at short range, and has to be incessantly renewed. The world is in a constant state of creation and dissolution, say the Kabbalists. It is absurd to speak of anything that existed a thousand or even a hundred years ago as thecauseof anything existing to-day. The design may intellectually survive, but the energy is long since dissipated. We have nevermore than about a day's supply of energy in store at once.
If sentiment, power, and design are supplied by different individuals, no single one of them can be called the cause of the effect. The relation of each to the result is sequence. When we have traced an effect to the mind or minds that supplied the three or the two necessary elements—supposing the design is sometimes omitted and the act what we callinstinctive—we have obtained a complete explanation of the effect. Our curiosity is then absolutely satisfied. We have reached a true beginning.
It is the want of this thorough explanation that renders material science so disappointing. We are put off with a mere physical antecedent, which itself needs explanation as much as its consequent. It does not make the antecedent more significant to place it far back in time, for time by itself is not a cause—it is merely a name given to intervals of experience. A thing is never truly explained until we see that its production either caused pleasure to something else, or was expected to cause pleasure. Behind everything must be Sentiment.
One generation of beings is not the cause of the following generation, else the former would have perished in begetting the latter. More particularly, a man is not theeffectof his parents or remoter ancestors, though they stood to him in an antecedent relation.The seed of his body was taken from theirs, but his energy is his own, drawn direct from the universal source. If he resembles them corporeally it is because he previously resembled them mentally, not because the cells of his body have hereditary tendencies to take particular forms. Hence the Darwinian genealogy of men and animals—supposing it were correct—does not explain them. It is a phenomenal schematism based on or implying an erroneous assumption—that generation is causation.
Atomism—the theory of Democritus—is founded on another false view of causation. The physical parts of a thing are conceived to be the causes of the thing, and so the least conceivable particles of 'matter' are considered the first causes and true explanation of all things. This notion appears to be useful in chemistry, but it cannot be accepted as philosophy. If our senses were sharpened to perceive atoms these would simply be small phenomena, and it would still be necessary to inquire what motive and power produced them. It has been suggested that atoms may be inherently sentient and dynamic: if so they are minute animals or cells, and we are still without an explanation of their occurrence in organised masses. It is inconceivable that they should spontaneously enter into intricate combinations, whose evident purpose has only an indirect and partial bearing on their welfare.
Though advocated by men of undoubted ability, Atomism and Evolution are nothing more than forms of the ordinary realistic belief, that things are caused by their physical antecedents. The two theories are supposed to be complementary, but in reality they are contradictory. If an animal body is caused by its parents it cannot be caused by its own atoms, andvice versâ.
Varieties of Causation.Abstract causation—the category—consists of a cause and an effect. The former, as we have seen, is complicated, the latter may comprise several objects. Ignoring the complications involved in the use of an organism—which comes between the mind and the final effect—we distinguish four or five varieties of causation.
Varieties of Causation
The cause C produces from its own energy the series of effectse1—e4, like the rebounding of a missile from the surface of ground or water. This may be called 'ricochet.'
Effects, each having an independent cause, sometimes form a series like a ladder:
Effects
This is the species illustrated by a successive dischargeof musketry. The causation of science consists of theeffectsin this species considered apart from the causes.
In the 'gamut' the effects are in sequence, but they have all the same physical antecedent.
the 'gamut'
The successive acts of the same man or animal are of this kind.
In each of these species the effects are in series and may be treated as a sequence, but the cause or causes lie outside the sequence. Far from mere regularity of succession being a proof of causation between the objects, it may very easily be itself a part of the causal design.
In the 'capstan' several partial causes contribute to produce one effect, as when a gang of men manipulate one engine.
the 'capstan'
The 'star' or 'fountain' is the converse of the last.A single cause produces several simultaneous partial effects, as when we strike our open hand smartly on the surface of water.
the 'star' or 'fountain'
These sub-categories enable us, if we so wish, to define an energic series somewhat more precisely than by calling it a causation in the most abstract sense. Possibly also the figures delineated represent the primitive forms which energy takes when emerging into the phenomenal. The 'star' is a most characteristic form. The dendritic shape so frequently met with in objects is a star springing from a ray of a preceding star. Perhaps each vegetable bud has an independent cause; if not they are 'ricochets' from the general plant life. In the combinations of these elementary effects we have a likely explanation of plant and crystal formation.
'Conservation' of Energy.Energy is annihilated in the using. It emanates from a great universal centre, and at a short distance from that centre is completely and irrecoverably dissipated. The apparent fixity of things is purely formal—like the fixityof a water-fall, which renews its substance every few seconds. That is the meaning of saying that the world is in a constant state of formation and dissolution.
Physical theorists represent energy under the figure of substance, but they suppose it is fixed inquantitythough constantly undergoing change ofform—the scientific view, here as elsewhere, being just the opposite of the philosophical.
Observe—say the conservationists—the case of a man raising a heavy stone from the earth. He fatigues himself but he does not destroy energy; he acquires command over the energy-in-position of the stone, and in using it to crack a cocoa-nut or drive a post he receives back his own energy undiminished in quantity.
That seems reasonable at first sight. A quantity of energy is taken from the man and put into the stone; it is taken from the stone and put into the driven post. To be sure, if the man undrives the post he does not thereby disfatigue himself, as the theory would lead us to expect—he fatigues himself the more.
The same 'law,' we are told, holds good in building a dam across a stream and utilising the force of water to drive a mill. The energy apparently lost in the construction is recovered in the superior ease with which we grind our corn or saw our timber. Thereis a confusion in the terminology here: to save energy that would otherwise be lost is not identical with recovering energy that has once been used.
We make a gun, load it, and discharge a bullet against a target. What has become of the force expended? It has been transformed into heat, say the conservationists. And when the target and flattened bullet have cooled down? The energy has gone to raise the general temperature of the universe!
That is a conclusion hard to believe and impossible to verify. But—granting that the individual explosions of a gun may be the 'conservation' of some antecedent power—how do we recover the initial expense of the instrument? And if not recoverable, where at least and in what form does it exist? Prior to the explosions that are represented by heated targets and the like, energy was spent in inventing and making the gun, making the ammunition, loading and aiming the piece. All these were essential to the effect—and what has become of them? Have they also gone to warm the universe?
Instead of raising a stone to a height, let us carry it along horizontally till we feel the same degree of fatigue. If energy in the using is merely transformed but not lost, we should now be in possessionof some power equivalent to the energy expended. But we are not—we have nothing to show for our trouble.
If we construct a water-mill and fix it high and dry in the middle of a plain, instead of under a fall of water, we get no return for the energy expended. By such a law as the conservation of energy, and with the usefulness of a properly placed mill as the measure of compensation, we should receive an equivalent return no matter where the mill is placed. What hasplaceto do with the action of a universal law?
Instead of raising the stone or carrying it horizontally, let us find it near the edge of a precipice and roll it over. There is no proportion between the push that launched the stone, and the force it exhibits on reaching the foot of the precipice. How is the equivalence of energy maintained in this case? It will be replied that the force now at work is gravitation. If so, it was gravitation that brought down the first stone on the post—not any energy transferred from us to the stone. The raising of the stone put us in a position to use the force of gravity, just as climbing the precipice put us in a position to roll the stone over the edge of it.
Such considerations as these make this 'law' incredible to me. But when I pass from the explanation to the concrete facts, I have no difficulty inunderstanding them. It is the law that is obscure—not the facts.
There exists nothing but living minds of different degrees of energy. We men are small beings associated with a cosmical creature whose force is immeasurably greater than ours, and we have intelligence enough to utilise part of this force to supplement our own. That is the meaning ofmechanism. Some efforts to control the cosmic forces are profitable, but there is no transmutation of our energy into the result, nor any necessary equivalence between the labour and the result. We may stumble upon an available cosmic force almost by accident—we may waste a life-time over a mechanical problem and fail to solve it.
The utilisation of cosmic force by man is best explained by comparing it with animal slavery. Trap a wild elephant and train him to draw and carry—you have constructed an engine. There are of course important differences between the two kinds of instrument, due to the enormous disproportion between the magnitude and power of the respective entities. In the case of the animal the whole life comes under our control: in the case of the cosmos we can utilise only a minute fraction of it, and that rather by putting ourselves in its way than by making it obey us. The animal we have to feed: the cosmic being does not draw upon us for its nourishment. Wecan direct the animal through his sensibility: the cosmic sensibility appears to be beyond our power of irritation.
Apart from these differences the general laws of the one kind of tool are those of the other also. We have not transferred power to the raised stone, or the coiled spring, or the loaded gun, or the embanked river—any more than to the tamed and harnessed horse. There is no fixed ratio between the fatigue of catching and training an animal, and the energy saved by making him work for us. The animal's work is not our own energy given back to us—neither is the machine's. A plough is useless without cattle to draw it—so is a turbine without water to drive it. When coal is burned to 'generate' electricity, that is the cosmic equivalent of exhausting or killing one animal to overpower or to feed another: the energy of combustion is utterly destroyed—not transformed into the electricity.
The question can be more accurately stated and brought to a plain issue if we use the terms and forms of dialectic.
A theory is an argument—when it is not a fallacy—and an argument, we have seen, consists of two parts. There is the matter of fact requiring explanation, and the antecedent knowledge which is used to illustrate it. Of these the precedent is the more important,and it is no valid objection to a criticism that the person who offers it knows less about thecasethan the theorist. The critic may be in possession of a better precedent, which the theorist has failed to notice, perhaps from a too exclusive attention to the case.
In the question before us the case is Mechanical or Inorganic Energy. It is not an object, but an inference from the knowledge of our personal mental energy. This latter is the only energy we really perceive. But we find in objects, or associated with the perception of them, a power capable of assisting or of opposing our efforts—hence we conclude it is something of the same nature as our own power. We cannot well avoid that inference, and there is no apparent reason why we should try to avoid it.
So far science and philosophy are at one, but here they part company. Philosophy consistently endows Nature with sentiency also, for we never—to our certain knowledge—meet with energy without sentiency, and we have no right to transfer one attribute without the other.
Although science is indebted to the assimilation of organic and inorganic—Nature explained by Man—for the first notion of external energy, no sooner is the notion formed than the argument is discarded, and external energy is declared to be entirely destitute of an organic and mental character. How then is itto be further explained? To what shall it now be likened?
In the materialistic scheme all things are supposed to be resolved into matter and force. Matter is conceived as a self-existent substance, indestructible, &c. It is better known than force, for material things can be directly perceived whereas force is imaginary all the time. Under these circumstances it is natural though illogical to treat force as a species of matter. With only two things left in the universe, the better known of the two will be used to explain the less known, if an explanation is considered indispensable. Force is accordingly brought as a 'case' under matter as a 'precedent,' and is concluded to be indestructible because matter is believed to be indestructible; and when energy appears to be wasted the inference is that it has simply withdrawn from view, like an object that has ceased to be perceived and may be perceived again. That seems to be the evolution of the scientific notion of inorganic energy.
This theorem is fallacious in two respects. There is no such matter as science imagines. Matter is a general idea formed by the study of material objects, which are states of consciousness excited by noumenal contact. It is the average object—a mere affection or formation of the observing mind.Weare the makers of matter. Such an idea cannot be said to be indestructible: in a sense it is destroyed in an individualwhen it is forgotten or inactive; it would certainly be destroyed if all minds ceased to form it. Thus the precedent in the scientific theory of force is itself false.
Then energy is not in the least like matter—either the matter of science or that of philosophy. The energy we really know is a unique experience—not a general idea, nor anything analogous to a phenomenal object; so that even if the proposed precedent were true in itself, it is not applicable to the case. To complete our knowledge of external energy we must go back to that comparison which first suggested to us that there is external energy, namely, the comparison of living man with living nature.
If this is not a correct account of the derivation of the notion that cosmic energy is indestructible, let conservationists tell us what is the parallel on which they are arguing. Here is a blank theorem for completion—
Matter, as we have seen, is notx. Human energy is notx. Our individual power—so far as experience informs us—is destroyed in the using. A day's work exhausts us, and we have to pass into the conditioncalled sleep to be refilled. It is sleep, not food, that refreshes the mind. Food restores the bodily tool we have been working with—puts a fresh edge on the chisel,—but it does not recuperate the power that wields the tool.
What then isx?
If dreams could be studied with our waking consciousness they would throw much light on our mental nature. Being a poor dreamer myself I am not competent to discuss this phase of psychology as it deserves. I think however the bulk of our dreams can be reduced to two principles. There is first the simple lowering of the mental energy, which weakens the attention and dissolves the artificial categories, thus making ordinary reason impossible. There is just enough energy left to revive a few scattered ideas, which blend together without control or regard to precedent. Hence the singular combinations they sometimes form.In the waking state the objective and intellectual experience are generally more vivid and engrossing than the sentimental—at least in masculine persons. (I deliberately avoid the phrase 'masculine mind,' because there is manifestly no sex in mind.) In dreams the converse of this is the case. The objects we appear to see are dull and indistinct, being ideas mistaken for objects, whilst thefeelings are evidently genuine and sometimes of great intensity. This may be explained on the occult principle alluded to in sectionx.What I understand by occult influence is this. In ordinary experience the object is first perceived, then a sentiment may be excited either by the same noumenon or by recollection. In the occult procedure this order is reversed. The sentiment is first secretly reached through the chinks of our intellectual armour, and the intellect is not excited at all or only by association. During sleep, when the Self is nearly exhausted of power, it is likely we are more exposed than usual to such influences. They invade our mind and excite our sentiment without awaking the intellect. Whatever ideas accompany the sentiments are generally inadequate to explain them, the stock of available ideas being now reduced.The conversations we hold in dreams, and the apparent communication of knowledge that takes place, are referred by Du Prel to a division of the ego into two or more individuals who talk together. This notion appears to me forced and unthinkable. Under what image is the ego figured that it should be capable of division? In the waking state we sometimes ask ourselves questions, and on consideration find answers to them. We cannot recall a name, a word, or date, though we know it is somewhere in our memory, and we pause and search till we succeed in exciting the latent image. When this takes place in a dream the information is assumed to come from another individual by an easy dramatisation.A disturbance in the body during sleep may constitute—like all bodily suffering—a drain upon our mental energy, which will be felt as a sentiment and may excite ideas bysympathy. No doubt many dreams are caused in this manner.Since our waking consciousness is highly artificial and imaginary, we may infer that whilst dreaming we are nearer to the natural, primitive state of the mind, but in a weakened condition.
If dreams could be studied with our waking consciousness they would throw much light on our mental nature. Being a poor dreamer myself I am not competent to discuss this phase of psychology as it deserves. I think however the bulk of our dreams can be reduced to two principles. There is first the simple lowering of the mental energy, which weakens the attention and dissolves the artificial categories, thus making ordinary reason impossible. There is just enough energy left to revive a few scattered ideas, which blend together without control or regard to precedent. Hence the singular combinations they sometimes form.
In the waking state the objective and intellectual experience are generally more vivid and engrossing than the sentimental—at least in masculine persons. (I deliberately avoid the phrase 'masculine mind,' because there is manifestly no sex in mind.) In dreams the converse of this is the case. The objects we appear to see are dull and indistinct, being ideas mistaken for objects, whilst thefeelings are evidently genuine and sometimes of great intensity. This may be explained on the occult principle alluded to in sectionx.
What I understand by occult influence is this. In ordinary experience the object is first perceived, then a sentiment may be excited either by the same noumenon or by recollection. In the occult procedure this order is reversed. The sentiment is first secretly reached through the chinks of our intellectual armour, and the intellect is not excited at all or only by association. During sleep, when the Self is nearly exhausted of power, it is likely we are more exposed than usual to such influences. They invade our mind and excite our sentiment without awaking the intellect. Whatever ideas accompany the sentiments are generally inadequate to explain them, the stock of available ideas being now reduced.
The conversations we hold in dreams, and the apparent communication of knowledge that takes place, are referred by Du Prel to a division of the ego into two or more individuals who talk together. This notion appears to me forced and unthinkable. Under what image is the ego figured that it should be capable of division? In the waking state we sometimes ask ourselves questions, and on consideration find answers to them. We cannot recall a name, a word, or date, though we know it is somewhere in our memory, and we pause and search till we succeed in exciting the latent image. When this takes place in a dream the information is assumed to come from another individual by an easy dramatisation.
A disturbance in the body during sleep may constitute—like all bodily suffering—a drain upon our mental energy, which will be felt as a sentiment and may excite ideas bysympathy. No doubt many dreams are caused in this manner.
Since our waking consciousness is highly artificial and imaginary, we may infer that whilst dreaming we are nearer to the natural, primitive state of the mind, but in a weakened condition.
13:Ueberweg'sLogic, Fleming'sVocabulary, and Dickenson'sDict. of Philosophy.
14:When the perspective object is accurately measured by instrument at a known distance from the eye, and the tactual size of the object is also known, the associative distance can be calculated by simple proportion. Multiply the measuring distance by the tactual size and divide the product by the perspective size—the quotient is the distance. The perspective size of objects is greatly exaggerated in realism. Most people think they see a man at his full stature for a distance of fifty yards or so. At that distance the tallest man does not measure half an inch in height. At twenty feet a six-foot man measures 3·6 inches—at ten feet 7·2 inches. The people assembled in a room forty feet long range in real—perspective—height from seven inches to two inches. When a man is nearer than ten feet we do not perceive him in one operation—we observe him in parts which we put together in the mind.
15:Probably Dr. Johnson meant to be humorous in his way. The principles of Idealism are apt to excite mirth in the unphilosophical, but the laugh is not always on the side of the scoffer. A member of the Persian philosophical sect called Samradians once said to his steward: 'The world and its inhabitants have no actual existence; they have merely an ideal being.' The servant on hearing this took the first favourable opportunity to conceal his master's horse, and when he was about to ride brought him an ass with the horse's saddle. When the Samradian asked, 'Where is the horse?'—the servant replied, 'Thou hast been thinking of an idea; there was no horse in being.' The master answered, 'It is true'; he then mounted the ass, and after riding for some time he suddenly dismounted and taking the saddle off the ass's back placed it on the servant's, drawing the girths tightly; and having forced the bridle into his mouth, he mounted him and flogged him along vigorously. The servant in piteous accents exclaimed, 'What is the meaning of this treatment?'—to which the Samradian replied, 'There is no such thing as a whip; it is merely ideal; thou art only thinking of some illusion.' After which the steward repented and restored the horse.
Another Samradian—or perhaps the same individual—having married the daughter of a rich man, she, on finding out her husband's creed, proposed to have some amusement at his expense. One day the Samradian brought in a bottle of pure wine, which during his absence she emptied of its contents and filled with water. When the time for taking wine arrived she poured out water instead of wine, into a gold cup which was her own property. The Samradian having observed, 'Thou hast given me water instead of wine,'—she answered, 'It is only ideal; there was no wine in existence.' The husband then said, 'Thou hast spoken well; hand me the cup that I may go to a neighbour's house and bring it back full of wine.' He thereupon took out the gold cup, which he sold, and instead of it brought back an earthen vessel full of wine. The wife on seeing this said, 'What hast thou done with the golden cup?' He replied, 'Thou art surely thinking of some ideal golden cup'—on which the woman greatly regretted her witticism.—Dabistán, v. i. p. 199-200.