F. C. S. Schiller

“ An οὐσία which is not immanent and does not assert itself in the world of phenomena, but remains an inert and secluded δύναμις, is lifeless and worthless. Hence the καθόλου must be in the world and pervade it; or, in his technical phrase, must display itself in actuality (ἐνεργεία) . Not that Aristotle denies the validity of the considerations which led Plato to frame his conception of οὐσία; he denies only its adequacy. The highest conception must be Ἐνέργεια and not Δύναμις, the actual functioning of a substance whose real nature is only so revealed. ”

“ That such an equilibrium is not unthinkable we may gather from the conceptions of a balance of income and expenditure, of the ‘stationary state’ of economics and of perfect justice as a social harmony in which each maintains his own position in society without aggression on others. Surely in none of these cases could it be asserted that there was a cessation of social or industrial relations. Once more the apparent paradox arises merely out of the habit of interpreting ἐνέργεια ἀκινησίας as a cessation of activity. ”

“ The ideal of Rest, on the other hand, is wholly illusory: there is no rest anywhere attainable for the wicked or the virtuous. It is non-existent as a fact, and it is non-existence as a conception. For if anything could really cease to be active, it would cease to be. We cannot, therefore, interpret existence by the conception of Rest, unless, indeed, it pleases us (with Mainländer) to regard the history of the world as the protracted agony of the Absolute’s suicide.
Compared with these, the advantages of the conception of Ἐνέργεια Ἀκινησίας are manifest. ”

“ In the case of Life it is somewhat easier to conceive perfection as a changeless activity, because we are more inclined to regard life as depending on a harmony of changes rather than on the mere instability of organic processes. Thus if with Spencer we conceive life as an adjustment of internal to external relations (‘mutual adjustment’ would be better!) , it is evident that the success of life will depend on the degree of correspondence, however attained, between the organism and its environment. ”

“ Now it is true that the doctrine of the dissipation of energy ceases to apply to an infinite universe, but the reason is merely that in view of an actual infinity, all propositions become unmeaning. And an infinite universe or whole involves a contradiction in terms, and is a pseudo-conception which can be reached only by a confusion of thought. ”

“ In the end, however, the Idea remains the only true reality, and the Idea as such is unchanging Being, out of Space and Time. Hence to call anything, e.g., Pleasure, a γένεσις is ipso facto to cast a slur upon its reality and to disqualify it for the position of the Chief Good which must be, he thinks, an abiding οὐσία.
In Aristotle the tables are once more turned. To Aristotle the real world, i.e., the world whereof we desire an explanation, is after all the world of change in which we move and live, rather than the system of immutable and timeless ‘laws’ which we devise for its explanation. ”

“ Under the name of the dissipation of energy this fact of its equilibration has become the great bugbear of physics and has given rise to the gloomiest vaticinations concerning the inevitable decadence and ultimate doom of the universe. ”

“ This whole difficulty arises out of our habit of contemplating equilibration as cessation of Motion or ‘Rest’. An equilibrated universe cannot change and its latent energy cannot be used to change it. Ergo such a universe is ‘played out’.
But why should we not regard it as a case of Ἐνέργεια Ἀκινησίας, as a perfecting of Motion until it has everywhere become perfectly regular, steady, smooth and frictionless? Logically, in fact, this seems a far preferable alternative. Suppose, e.g., an equilibrium of temperature. ”

“ It is eternal, not in the illusory sense in which geometrical triangles and epistemological monstrosities (like e.g., Green’s Eternal Self-Consciousness) are put out of Time by a trick of abstraction, but because it can be shown to have a positive nature, which precludes the conditions out of which time-consciousness arises. For, as Aristotle was well aware, Time is a creature of Motion, it depends on the motions whereby alone it can be measured ”

“ Time is the measure of the impermanence of the imperfect, and the perfecting of the time-consciousness would carry us out of Time into Eternity. In other words, the conception of Ἐνέργεια Ἀκινησίας is a scientific formulation of the popular theological conceptions of Heaven and Eternity. ”

“ But it is this latter view which is really unthinkable, as may be illustrated by taking a hypothetical case of a growing adaptation or harmony on the way to the perfection, the interpretation of which is disputed.
It will be admitted that in the stage immediately preceding perfect adaptation the organism is very much alive, and moreover carries on its life with a minimum of friction and a maximum of success. In such a life difficulties would exist only to be overcome, and any process of adapting would be only momentary. ”

“ And this is the reason why God always enjoys a single and simple pleasure; for there is not only an activity of motion, but also one void of motion, and pleasure is rather in constancy [7] than in motion. ”

“ All motions are measured by the unequal rates of change, and when two bodies maintain the same position relatively to each other, they are taken to be at rest. Similarly it is not denied that vital function consumes living tissue, nor that consciousness is a continuous flow of experiences. ”

“ In the Eleatics the affirmation of Being took the form of a rigid immutable Ὄν, whose uncompromising unity reduced all motion, change and plurality to an inexplicable illusion, and remorselessly crushed out the whole significance of human life. ”

“ It must be reached, of course, by a progressive development of consciousness in fulness and intensity and power of attention and the gradual suppression of all interruptions and discords. There can be no doubt, therefore, that it is consciousness in a very high sense, i.e., a contemplation, most pleasant and unimpeded, of that which most delights the soul. ”

“ Perfect correspondence therefore would be perfect life, and might be conceived as arising by a gradual perfecting of the correspondence until the organism either adapted itself completely to an unchanging environment or instantaneously and pari passu to a changing one, in such wise that the moment of non-adaptation (if any) was too brief to come into consciousness. In both these cases the relation of the organism to its environment would be unchangingly the same. ”

“ By the first voice it is conceived as death or cessation of activity. Thus § 173: “there finally results that complete equilibration we call death”. § 176: “the final question of Evolution is . . . incidental to the universal process of equilibration; and if equilibration must end in complete rest . . . if the solar system is slowly dissipating its forces . . . are we not manifestly progressing towards omnipresent death?” ”

“ In it plurality is recognised in the plurality of the Ideas, united though they are in the Idea of the Good, while the phenomenal world is admitted not to be wholly illusory, being μεταξὺ τοῦ ὄντος καὶ μὴ ὄντος, intermediate between the Ideas and the principle of impermanence, the mystery of which Plato seems to have thought he could resolve by calling it the ‘Non-Existent’. ”

“ Of its rivals, the conception of Becoming, as philosophers have had to recognise from Parmenides to Hegel, is infected with insoluble contradictions, which disappear only if we follow Aristotle in conceiving it as ἐνέργεια ἀτελής. For in this event all the processes we actually observe may be regarded as pointing forward to an ideal of a perfectly and equably self-sustaining activity, to attain which would relieve them of their contradictions. ”

“ That we are not entitled to infer from the facts the impossibility of an ἐνέργεια ἀκινησίας; (2) that it is by this conception rather than by that of ‘rest’ that the ultimate ideal of existence should be interpreted. I shall show this of the conceptions of Motion, Life and Consciousness in turn.
V. (a) It has long been admitted that Motion tends to equilibrium, and that in a perfect equilibrium there would be no (perceptible) motion and no available energy. ”

“ The aim of this article is to rescue from an unmerited obscurity the Aristotelian ideal of Being, to expound its nature, to remove the paradoxes which it seems, superficially, to involve, and, finally, to show that it alone is competent to satisfy the intellectual and emotional demands we must make upon our conception of Being, and so far to redeem philosophy from the opprobrium of terminating in inconceivable mysteries. ”

“ In man unfortunately, this happy state of things is only temporary: activity cannot be sustained because, owing to the defectiveness (πονηρία or φαυλότης) of a composite nature adulterated with ὕλη, we grow weary and allow our attention to wander and cannot be continuously active (συνεχῶς ἐνεργεῖν) . ”

“ It is also the social ideal, and limits the process towards heterogeneity—“the ultimate abolition of all limits to the freedom of each, save those imposed by the like freedom of all, must result from the complete equilibration between man’s desires and the conduct necessitated by surrounding conditions”. ”