Alexander Philip

“ In a word, it would rather seem as if Science, unconscious of its pregnant possibilities, has not only formulated a theory which co-ordinates and unifies the entire fabric of physical knowledge, but has also at length furnished Philosophy with the key to that problem the solution of which has, in the words of Schopenhauer, been the main endeavour of philosophers for more than two centuries, namely, to separate by a correctly drawn line of cleavage the Ideal—that which belongs to our knowledge as such—from the Real, that which exists independently of us ”

“ 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. ”

“ The problem of Metaphysics—the nature of Reality—still presses for a solution. Agnosticism is but a cautious idealism—a timid phenomenalism. That philosophy, however named, which proclaims that the experience of life is nothing more than a vain show, a pantomime of sensations distinguished only from ideas by their greater intensity and distinctness, is not only a confession of failure. ”

“ We seek to bring the added light of scientific theory to reconcile the conflict between the law and the fact, between the objects of reflection and the objects of sense, between the world of thought and the world of phenomena,—the problem which Plato raised and which has since been the central problem of Metaphysics. ”

“ 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 Greeks of that day were endowed with a singular clearness of intellectual vision. They readily recognised that Knowledge was an intellectual process; they appreciated the activity of Thought or Rational Discourse as essential to its formation. They quite understood that Knowledge is not of the nature of a photograph—a resemblant pictorial reproduction of the data furnished by sensation. Only very casually and occasionally do we ever attempt to supply ourselves with a resemblant reproduction of our sensations. ”

“ To us it seems not strange that Philosophy should in the end be indebted to Science for this solution—nor should Science, in the hour of her greatest speculative victory, object too hastily to the assistance which the thinker, trained to the study of the process of thought, can render in clarifying and restating in its metaphysical aspects a theory which, if profoundly conceived, and formulated by men of science from Rumford and Davy to Stewart, Tait, and Kelvin, was partially anticipated by the metaphysician who conceived the world as will and idea. ”

“ The deeper thinkers are pretty nearly agreed that the Absolute is not to be identified with its appearances. How far they can bring home this view in practical form to the intelligence of man is another matter. Plato doubtless saw the truth in a sort of beatific vision, but the tide of speculation ebbed after his death, and its healing waters never inundated the deserts of mediæval thought. ”

“ Truly to discriminate and unravel these,—validly to separate the Ideal element which impregnates that Reality which we are for ever compelled to postulate and recognise, still remains the great problem of Philosophy—humbler perhaps and more practical, but not less profound than any vain attempt to discover to finite conception the Absolute as it is in itself. Therefore it is that the efforts of negative and agnostic criticism to dispense with the recognition of Reality as a necessary postulate of our activity are foredoomed to failure. ”

“ Indeed, if Experience were composed solely of sensations, each individual would be an isolated solipsistic unit—incapable of rational Discourse or communication with his fellow-men. To cure this defect, Plato offered the ideas—universal forms common to the intelligence of every rational being. Not only would they render possible a common Knowledge of Reality—the existence of such ideas would necessarily also give permanence, fixity, law, and order to our intellectual activity. Our Knowledge would not be a mere random succession of impressions, but a definitely determined organic unity. ”

“ Science, it seems to us, postulates in Energy an a-logical, unextended, real thing-in-itself in terms of which the phenomena of Physics can be adequately and quantifiably stated. At the same time it furnishes Philosophy with a theory of the objectively real thing-in-itself which satisfied those necessities of thought by which we are constrained to interpret our sense-experience by a constant reference to a Reality beyond it—a necessity due to our association as Actors with an Energy beyond that which is the seat of our Presentment. ”

“ The world consists not merely of phenomena, nor of phenomena and laws which regulate them. These are but transitional and imperfect aspects of Reality. "Our standard of Truth and Reality," says a recent writer, "moves us on towards an individual with laws of its own, and to laws which form the vital substance of a single existence." We approach such a goal in the conception of Energy—the laws of whose constant transmutations are what we call Nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The real substratum of my Presentment is a part of the energetic Universe, which is constantly undergoing transmutations. Wherever such Energy is united, in an organism, with consciousness these transmutations, as affecting and perceived by such consciousness, constitute its Presentment or sense-experience; and aided by the constructive activity of thought expand, as it were, subjectively into a whole world of experience, as the electric current vibrating darkly along the narrow confines of the wire suddenly expands at the carbon point into the luminous undulations which light a city. ”

“ Time to be known must be measured.
Periodicity, therefore, is essential to our Knowledge of Time. But Nature amply supplies us with this necessary instrument. The Law of Periodicity prevails widely throughout Nature. It absolutely dominates Life.
The centre of animal vitality is to be found in the beating heart and breathing lungs. Pulsation qualifies not merely the nutrient life but the musculo-motor activity as well. Eating, Walking,—all our most elementary movements are pulsatory. We wake and sleep, we grow weary and rest. We are born and we die, we are young and grow old. ”

“ The doctrine of Energy therefore puts in a new and clearer light the whole theory of Causation.
It is common for philosophers to talk of invariable sequence as the criterion of Causality. But, in fact, that is quite fallacious. No one ever regards a phenomenon as the cause of another phenomenon. We ascribe Causality to the energetic transmutation which in some form or other we inevitably believe to accompany the appearance of every phenomenon. We never postulate a causal relation between day and night—the most notable case of invariable sequence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It might, however, be urged in reply that the idea of Time is not derived from the external world at all, but is furnished to us directly by the operations of the Mind, and that therefore its intellectual origin need not involve any exception to the general rule that the materials of our Knowledge of the world are furnished by Sensation alone. Without, therefore, entering upon any discussion of the interesting question as to what is the real nature of Time, we shall pass to the idea of Space. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mach, the writer whom we have already quoted, in his essay on Space and Geometry speaks constantly and freely of sensations of Space, and as there can be no denial of the fact that Space is a constituent of the external world, it would seem to follow that those who hold Sensation to be the only source of our Knowledge must be obliged to affirm the possibility of sensations of Space. Mach indeed claims to distinguish physiological Space, geometrical Space, visual Space, tactual Space as all different and yet apparently harmoniously blended in our Experience. ”

“ 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 [61] the conception of potency at all? We reply that we arrive at the idea of potent action because we are ourselves active beings. ”

“ Freedom is a negation of the Actual. Absolute freedom is a condition only theoretically possible, and is essentially the negation of the state of restraint in which our life is maintained.
But the definition last quoted is nevertheless valuable because it clearly shows what really is the origin of the idea of Space. It proves that the idea of Space is a representation of one condition of our Activity. It is because the primary work of Thought is to represent the forms of our dynamic Activity that we find the idea of Space so necessary and fundamental. ”

“ In ordinary Discourse we freely employ our ideas of external objects without ever attempting a detailed reproduction of the visual image. Such a reproduction would be both impracticable and unnecessary, and would involve such a sacrifice of time as to render Discourse altogether impossible. All that the Mind of the vident ordinarily grasps and utilises in his discursive employment of the idea of any physical thing is what we have ventured to call its dynamic significance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is the whole Universe, as known to me or conceived by me, contained within a minute portion of itself—the brain? Now Science does say something very like this, and the logical difficulties of the position are very pressing. But they cannot be got over by attempting to revert to common sense, because to assert that all my conceived Universe is immediately perceived by me as it exists, would seem to involve a diffusion of my intelligence throughout Space which is still more inconceivable and self-contradictory. ”

“ Human Knowledge just is the body of man's representations of his Experience in the world of which he forms a part. It is not necessary to insist here on the gradual but remarkable growth and extension which Human Knowledge has undergone during the last two thousand years. Concurrently with its extension man's ability to control the forces of Nature has been enlarged and increased. At the same time, however, that extension has rendered possible false developments and aberrations to which the more limited representations of the brute are less liable. ”

“ Philip, a thinker of considerable acuteness, expounds further the dynamic theory of knowledge which he propounded in 'Matter and Energy' and the 'Doctrine of Energy.' What we are really sensible of in the external world is mutation; but the consciousness of our own activity suggests the existence of something behind phenomena. The reality which sustains experience is found to be, in essence, power—power conceived as an energy containing within itself the principle of its own evolution ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now we maintain, on the contrary, that such a statement of physical theory is erroneous and redundant; that Science is not obliged to postulate two such entities; that the concept of Energy supplies all her requirements; and that the employment of that conception obviates the very serious contradictions which are involved in any assumption of a real entity of the nature of Matter as ordinarily understood—a conception of which the very description involves difficulties which have perplexed thinking men for more than two centuries. ”

“ Space, Mass, Force are all therefore ideas which are furnished to us out of our experience as potent actors, and the recognition of this great truth provides us with the means of clearly apprehending and co-relating our conceptions of the external world, the framework of our Knowledge. ”

“ Of course, neither Thought nor Volition, as such, can be the absolute Reality. They, like Physical Force, are but transmutations, affections, phases of Reality. Nor, again, is Energy, as a quality, a correct description of the Absolute, as such. The Absolute, as such, we cannot describe; but in studying, as Physics does, the relations of physical phenomena and stating these in terms of Reality, it conveniently gives Reality a name appropriate to its own standpoint.
Metaphysics rightly declines to be required to study special branches of Science. ”