Chapter 3

The maxims by which it was sought to constitute _a priori_ a scheme of natural laws could not justly claim descent from the necessities of Thought. Had the Schoolmen formed a true conception of the nature of Knowledge they would never have imagined that any necessity of Thought obliged them to believe that a 10 lb. weight would fall to the ground more rapidly than a 1 lb. weight. Equally true is it that their scientific principles had not been derived from any study of the action of natural law. They were unacknowledged intellectual orphans.

The movement associated with the names of Galileo, Bruno, Bacon, Kepler, and Newton owed its origin and its success to the abandonment of this vicious principle. So far as Nature was concerned, the Mind was regarded as a _tabula rasa_, and the physician set himself to ascertain the laws of nature not by reflection upon his own mental processes or requirements, but by experiment with and observation of natural processes themselves. The result has been the establishment of modern science--the greatest triumph which the human mind has yet achieved.

In a criticism of the writer's essay on _The Dynamic Foundation of Knowledge_ in the _Revue neo-scolastique_ of 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'_actuel_ et le _potentiel_ dans 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 much a 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 of Science 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.

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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 famous _Cogito, 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 a _tabula 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.

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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 term _sensible ideas_ unfortunately 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 a _tabula rasa_ of 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.

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A masterly protest against the position of Hume was made by his countryman Reid, who in his _Inquiry into the Human Mind_ very 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 and substantial elements or forms by which it is sustained, but on the contrary left their recognition to what he rather vaguely described as common sense.

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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.

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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 more than a helpful stepping-stone to the true answer.

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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.

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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 unstable appears to stand in a direct and even unique relation to the real. It fails to let us understand how that relation arises, how the sensible is generated, or how it enters into our consciousness.

(_b_) We are unable under this theory to discover how we ever reach a Knowledge of the real World, how we can get beyond ourselves, how if the Mind in its search for truth is perpetually intercepted by its own forms it can ever furnish us with any genuine cognitions of the external.

(2) We have the theory that the essential forms of Reality are to be found in the Object and are thence supplied to the Understanding, which plays the part merely of a receptive surface or _tabula rasa_.

In the hands of Aristotle this doctrine took the form of an affirmation that Nature must be regarded as an energetic process containing within itself the potency by which it perpetually generated the actual.

Promising as it was in Aristotle's hands, this speculation was not carried forward or 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 even by the leaders of scientific discovery, this was the conception of Nature which inspired and sustained the scientific advance. In the department of philosophic speculation, however, it appeared only under the debased and misleading form of a belief that the sensible presentation was the true source of the contents of Cognition, that it was from Sensation that the Mind of Man derived the whole fabric of Science. "_Penser c'est sentir_" was the form in which it was expressed by Condillac, but was equally the view which commended itself to Berkeley, at least in his early writings, to Hume, and to a whole army of successors down to J. S. Mill.

We hope we have already sufficiently emphasised the falsity of such a view. Obviously, if the Mind were merely the 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.

Now _the_ fundamental, or at least _a_ fundamental error characteristic of all these various efforts after a solution is to be found in the fact that they view the World as a static thing rather than as a kinetic process.

The World to vision seems a great still thing in or on which no doubt innumerable bodies are moving to and fro, but which itself--the fundamental thing--is solid and unchanging. But this is an illusion. The seemingly unchanging features are changeless only in the monotony of their constant mutation.

Cohering 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 of Heracleitus, but his disciples did not--although we think there is good ground for believing that he did[60:1]--his disciples did not realise that a process, whilst it implies constant flux and change, implies also something permanent even in its mutations, something which undergoes the change and sustains the flow.

To understand a thing is to discover how it _operates_. The eternal forms of things are laws of natural action. Such are the law of gravitation, the laws of optics or of chemical combination. A static picture unless so interpreted must be at once valueless and meaningless.

It follows that Thought and Discourse, in furnishing us with Knowledge, must themselves be active, and must in some way or other reproduce the activity of Nature. Thought, in short, _is_ an Activity which reproduces the activity of things, the activity in which the phenomena of Nature arise.

But how do we arrive at any apprehension of Natural Action? What informs us that Nature is a potency ever operative? What suggests to us the conception of potency at all? We reply that we arrive at the idea of potent action because we are ourselves active beings. Our organism maintains itself by constant physiological activities. These are the permanent constancies of transmutation which _constitute_ the 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 to proceed at once to a rational explanation of Sensation.

Sensation is _obstructed action_. A detailed consideration of as many as you like to take of the myriad 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 Reality _is_ apprehended, as the Platonist holds, by the intellect and by the intellect alone. To that extent the Platonist is right. That cognisable element is Action. But Action is denoted for us only in the obstructions which it encounters. These obstructions 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.

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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 to follow the progress of the battle, but the battle is something other than a cloud of smoke.

We are, as Plato told us in his famous allegory, like prisoners in a cave--our 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 really _part_ of a larger _whole_. Our exertional action is _ab initio_ mingled in and forms really an integral part of the dynamic system in which our life is involved. The ever operative forces of Gravity, Cohesion, Chemical Affinity, and so forth are the phenomenal expression of the laws of energetic 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 is _organically one_ with the organs of Cognition and Feeling.

It is only by a visual fiction that we come to regard our active selves as distinct from the dynamic system. We cannot, in fact, shake off the bonds of corporeality, of gravity, of all the various restraints of our organic activity.

Relatively, however, the cerebral activity of Thought is liberated from the stresses of the dynamic environment; hence the apparent freedom and independence, under certain conditions, of Thought, Imagination, and Volition.