Chapter 22

But this view of the world is a very unstable one, and requires very little reflection to overturn it, and bring one to the next basis--that of _abstract ideas_. When the mind looks carefully at the world of things, it finds that there is dependence and interdependence. Each object is related to something else, and changes when that changes. Each object is a part of a process that is going on. The process produced it, and the process will destroy it--nay, it is destroying it now, while we look at it. We find, therefore, that things are not the true beings which we thought them to be, but processes _are_ the reality. Science takes this attitude, and studies out the history of each thing in its rise and its disappearance, and it calls this history the truth. This stage of thinking does not believe in _atoms_ or in _things_; it believes in _forces_ and _processes_--"abstract ideas"--because they are negative, and cannot be seen by the senses. This is the dynamic stand-point in philosophy.

Reflection knows that these abstract ideas possess more truth, more reality, than the "things" of sense-perception; the force is more real than the thing, because it outlasts a thing,--it causes things to originate, and to change, and disappear.

This stage of abstract ideas or of negative powers or forces finally becomes convinced of the essential unity of all processes and of all forces; it sets up the doctrine of the _correlation of forces_, and believes that persistent force is the ultimate truth, the fundamental reality of the world. This we may call a concrete idea, for it sets up a principle which is the origin of all things and forces, and also the destroyer of all things, and hence more real than the world of things and forces; and because this idea, when carefully thought out, proves to be the idea of self-determination--self-activity.

Persistent force, as taught us by the scientific men of our day, is the sole ultimate principle, and as such it gives rise to all existence by its self-activity, for there is nothing else for it to act upon. It causes all origins, all changes, and all evanescence. It gives rise to the particular forces--heat, light, electricity, magnetism, etc.--which in their turn cause the evanescent forms which sense-perception sees as "things."

We have described three phases:--

I. Sensuous Ideas perceive "things." II. Abstract Ideas perceive "forces." III. Concrete Idea perceives "persistent force."

In this progress from one phase of reflection to another, the intellect advances to a deeper and truer reality[14] at each step.

Sense-ideas which look upon the world as a world of independent objects, do not cognize the world truly. The next step, abstract ideas, cognizes the world as a process of forces, and "things" are seen to be mere temporary equilibria in the interaction of forces; "each thing is a bundle of forces." But the concrete idea of the Persistent force sees a deeper and more permanent reality underlying particular forces. It is one ultimate force. In it all multiplicity of existences has vanished, and yet it is the source of all particular existence.

This view of the world, on the stand-point of concrete idea, is pantheistic. It makes out a one supreme principle which originates and destroys all particular existences, all finite beings. It is the stand-point of Orientalism, or of the Asiatic thought. Buddhism and Brahminism have reached it, and not transcended it. It is a necessary stage of reflection in the mind, just as much as the stand-point of the first stage of reflection, which regards the world as composed of a multiplicity of independent things; or the stand-point of the second stage of reflection, which looks upon the world as a collection of relative existences in a state of process.

The final stand-point of the intellect is that in which it perceives the highest principle to be a self-determining or self-active Being, self-conscious, and creator of a world which manifests him. A logical investigation of the principle of "persistent force" would prove that this principle of Personal Being is presupposed as its true form. Since the "persistent force" is the sole and ultimate reality, it originates all other reality only by self-activity, and thus is self-determined. Self-determination implies self-consciousness as the true form of its existence.

These four forms of thinking, which we have arbitrarily called _sensuous_, _abstract_, _concrete_, and _absolute_ ideas, correspond to four views of the world: (1) as a congeries of independent things; (2) as a play of forces; (3) as the evanescent appearance of a negative essential power; (4) as the creation of a Personal Creator, who makes it the theatre of the development of conscious beings in his image. Each step upward in ideas arrives at a more adequate idea of the true reality. _Force_ is more real than _thing_; persistent force than particular forces; Absolute Person is more real than the force or forces which he creates.

This final form of thinking is the only form which is consistent with the theory of education. Each individual should ascend by education into participation--_conscious_ participation--in the life of the species. Institutions--family, society, state, church--all are instrumentalities by which the humble individual may avail himself of the help of the race, and live over in himself its life. The highest stage of thinking is the stage of insight. It sees the world as explained by the principle of Absolute Person. It finds the world of institutions a world in harmony with such a principle.

[1] The parallelism between these two sciences, Medicine and Education, is an obvious point, which every student will do well to consider.

[2] This will again remind the student of the theories of treatment in medicine in diseases which, in the seventeenth century, were treated only by bleeding and emetics, are now treated by nourishing food, and no medicines, etc.

[3] The teacher will do well to consider the probable result of the constant association with mental inferiors entailed by his work, and also to consider what counter-irritant is to be applied to balance, in his character, this unavoidable tendency.

[4] The age at which the child should be subject to the training of school life, or Education, properly so-called, must vary with different races, nations, and different children.

[5] The best educator is he who makes his pupils independent of himself. This implies on the teacher's part an ability to lose himself in his work, and a desire for the real growth of the pupil, independent of any personal fame of his own--a disinterestedness which places education on a level with the noblest occupations of man.

[6] See analysis.

[7] Asiatic systems of Education have this basis (see § 178 of the original).

[8] The definition of freedom here implied is this: Mind is free when it knows itself and wills its own laws.

[9] Perhaps, however slow the growth, there is real progress in liberating the imprisoned soul (?)

[10] "When me they fly, I am the wings."--_Emerson._

[11] The story of Peter Schlemihl, by Chamisso, may be read in the English translation published in "Hedge's German Prose Writers."

[12] That is, punishment is retributive and not corrective. Justice requires that each man shall have the fruits of his own deeds; in this it assumes that each and every man is free and self-determined. It proposes to treat each man as free, and as the rightful owner of his deed and its consequences. If he does a deed which is destructive to human rights, it shall destroy his rights and deprive him of property, personal freedom, or even of life. But corrective punishment assumes immaturity of development and consequent lack of freedom. It belongs to the period of nurture, and not to the period of maturity. The tendency in our schools is, however, to displace the forms of mere corrective punishment (corporal chastisement), and to substitute for them forms founded on retribution--_e.g._, deprivation of privileges. See secs. 42 and 43.

[13] Faust; Part I., Scene I. "How all weaves itself into the Whole! Each works and lives in the other! How the heavenly influences ascend and descend, and reach each other the golden buckets!"

[14] Hume, in his famous sketch of the Human Understanding, makes all the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds: _impressions_ and _ideas_. "The difference between them consists in the degrees of force and liveliness with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought and consciousness. Those perceptions which enter with the most force and violence we may name _impressions_, and under this name include all our sensations, passions, and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By _ideas_, I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning." "The identity which we ascribe to the mind of man is only a fictitious one."

From this we see that his stand-point is that of "sensuous ideas," the first stage of reflection. The second or third stage of reflection, if consistent, would not admit the reality to be the object of sense-impressions, and the abstract ideas to be only "faint images." One who holds, like Herbert Spencer, that persistent force is the ultimate reality--"the sole truth, which transcends experience by underlying it"--ought to hold that the generalization which reaches the idea of unity of force is the truest and most adequate of thoughts. And yet Herbert Spencer holds substantially the doctrine of Hume, in the words: "We must predicate nothing of objects too great or too multitudinous to be mentally represented, or we must make our predications by means of extremely inadequate representations of such objects--mere symbols of them." (Page 27 of "First Principles.")

End of Project Gutenberg's Pedagogics as a System, by Karl Rosenkranz