Metope

“ Various classes of facts unite to prove117 that the law of metamorphosis which holds among the physical forces, holds equally between them and the mental forces. Those modes of the unknowable which we call motion, light, heat, chemical affinity, etc., are alike transferable into each other, and into those modes of the unknowable which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, and thought ”

“ So for mediaeval men, metaphysics stood on logic’s shoulders and represented the final completion of their thought, in a universal system and scheme of God and man and things. [457] But the first part of this proposition had not been true with Greek philosophy. Metaphysics is properly occupied with being, in its ultimate essence and relationships; with the consistent putting together of things, to wit, the presentation or expression of them so as not to disagree with any of the data recognized as pertinent. ”

“ The metaphysician first carries off in triumph what are called its secondary qualities, as colour and heat, proving them to be no qualities of matter, but of mind, or the sensitive being. He next assails what had been pronounced to be its primary or essential qualities; the dark tangible mass that he had left behind is not suffered to retain its inert existence; extension, the power to fill space or resist pressure, what are these, he asks, but our own sensations or remembered sensations of touch, which have got associated, embodied together, agglomerated round some occult cause? ”

“ And I think that the most prominent characteristic of metaphysics, in history, has been its profession to prove the truth about non-natural existents. I define ‘metaphysical,’ therefore, by a reference to supersensible reality; although I think that the only non-natural objects, about which it has succeeded in obtaining truth, are objects which do not exist at all. ”

“ As to the historical and practical significance of realistic metaphysics in the history of life and of religion, one must say at once that, like all human conceptions, these various fundamental metaphysical conceptions also are, in one aspect, distinctly active and practical attitudes towards that Other which finite thought seeks. ”

“ Now, such an inquiry into the general character of reality, as opposed to more or less unreal appearance, is precisely what is meant by Metaphysics. Metaphysics sets itself, more systematically and universally than any other science, to ask what, after all, is meant by being real, and to what degree our various 5scientific and non-scientific theories about the world are in harmony with the universal characteristics of real existence. ”

“ The problem of Metaphysics is to ascertain what would be the general or formal character of such an experience, and how far the various provinces of our human experience and knowledge approximate to it. The knowledge Metaphysics can give us of the ultimate nature of reality as it would be present in a complete experience, though imperfect, is final as far as it goes. ”

“ That speculation which deals with the properties of bodies as if they were qualities, I call metaphysic. That theorizing which distinguishes properties from qualities and deals with properties as realities, I call science. That speculation which fails to find consciousness as an essential or concomitant ‘of bodies, but derives the mind from force or motion, I call materialism. ”

“ The meta-physical or spiritual (the terms are interchangeable) does not have to pass beyond the manasic globe to get on the solid ground of reality. The spiritual world is here in every physical atom and in every aggregation of them; in every planet, sun, and star; for they are seven, each and every one, not four. Behind the illusion of one atom or many, whether here or on Alcyone, there is reality and permanency in the undifferentiated cause, the spiritual archetype, the three higher beads on the string which are the proper study of metaphysics. ”

“ If what we care most about be the synoptic treatment of phenomena, the vision of the far and the gathering of the scattered like, we must follow the conceptual method. But if, as metaphysicians, we are more curious about the inner nature of reality or about what really makes it go, we must turn our backs upon our winged concepts altogether, and bury ourselves in the thickness of those passing moments over the surface of which they fly, and on particular points of which they occasionally rest and perch. ”

“ In the invention of his theory the metaphysician gives his measure, and permits us to value his imaginative power. But the hypothesis, which [253] in science is always provisional and revocable, is here the supreme reality, the fixed position, the inconcussum quid.
The choice of the principle depends on several causes: The chief of these is the creator's individuality. Every metaphysician has a point of view, a personal way of contemplating and interpreting the totality of things, a belief that tends to recruit adherents. ”

“ Thus our psychological descriptions depend for their very possibility upon the recognition of distinctions which are not present, as such, in the experience itself as directly presented to us but created by later reflection about it From the point of view of Metaphysics, however, it is possible to specify one universal characteristic of immediate feeling, which is of the utmost importance for our theories of reality and of knowledge. When we reflect upon any psychical fact whatever, we may distinguish within it two very different aspects. ”

“ Every metaphysic is an attempt to explain experience. It seeks not to describe phenomena, but to get behind phenomena to some ultimate ground, and the experience to be explained presents as its most characteristic feature the cognition of apparently transcendent objects. This character, which comes out most frankly in the naive realism which I have called the natural view of the world, appears to determine metaphysics more than any other character of experience. ”

“ Many metaphysicians, on the other hand, have reasoned as if our concern were with mental operations alone, and as if the abstractions in which they deal had an existence per se, without any relation to the phenomena of nature. ”

“ And here the question merges in the fundamental problem of metaphysics properly so called; to which science we leave it.
But although the extreme doctrine of the Idealist metaphysicians, that objects are nothing but our sensations and the laws which connect them, has not been generally adopted by subsequent thinkers; the point of most real importance is one on which those metaphysicians are now very generally considered to have made out their case: viz., that [pg 065] all we know of objects is the sensations which they give us, and the order of the occurrence of those sensations. ”

“ But if everything that has come from poetry, religion, social life and a still rudimentary physics and biology be removed from it, if we take away all the light material that may have been used in the construction of the stately building, a solid framework remains, and this framework marks out the main lines of a metaphysic which is, we believe, the natural metaphysic of the human intellect. We come to a philosophy of this kind, indeed, whenever we follow to the end, the cinematographical tendency of perception and thought. ”

“ As we have learned already, when we pass from the statement that the processes of the physical order may, for the purpose of description by general formulæ, and the invention of practical methods for their production, be treated as to all intents mechanical, to the very different assertion that the physical order really is rigidly mechanical, we have deserted empirical science for dogmatic Metaphysics, and our metaphysical dogma must stand or fall by its own ultimate coherency and intelligibility as a way of thinking about Reality. ”

“ Suppose, then, that the metaphysician should say that this Being becomes "I" under the law of causality, and beneath the action of the external objects which produce impressions upon it,—then we would like to know how it happened that these outward objects, which induced the human Being's sensations at the very first, did not cause him to become "I" then. When he was first born he was just as sensitive as he ever was afterwards,—no doubt more so,—but for long his sensations continued pure and unalloyed. ”

“ That this is the alternative that is embodied in the existence of metaphysics is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the metaphysical interpretation embodies itself in the categories of reason, design, purpose, and aim. Whatever difficulties we may encounter, then, in the use and application of the psychic analogy in determining the nature of the real, it is clear that its employment is inevitable and indispensable. ”

“ The metaphysician could not if he would, and would not if he could, escape the duty of estimating the bearing of the great scientific theories of his time upon our ultimate conceptions of the nature of the world as a whole. Every fundamental advance in science thus calls for a restatement and reconsideration of the old metaphysical problems in the light of the new discovery. ”

“ They act upon our inner darkness exactly as, in the photographic dark-room, the developing-bath acts upon the sensitized plate, I am convinced that the theory is accurate as regards intuition and clairvoyance proper, that is to say, in all cases where we are in the medium's presence and more or less directly in touch with him. But is it so in psychometry? Is it we who, unknown to ourselves, know all that the object contains, or is it the medium alone who discovers it in the object itself, independently of the person who produces the object? ”

“ If he says that mental phenomena cannot exist without a metaphysical ground or condition, and that therefore we ought to take it into account in all our study of mental phenomena, then he ought to hold that we should take into account the metaphysical ground or basis of material phenomena in all our study of them, and that the distinction between science and metaphysics should be abolished. ”

“ Metaphysics will thus possess this conspicuous advantage over every other science, that [Pg 190] each student, by attentively referring to his own mind, may ascertain the authorities, upon which any assertions regarding it are supported. There can thus be no deception, we ourselves being the depositaries of the evidence of the subject which we consider.
Metaphysics may be defined as an inquiry concerning those things belonging to, or connected with, the internal nature of man.
It is said that mind produces motion; and it might as well have been said, that motion produces mind. ”

“ In metaphysical science it is seen that only Mind shines by Her own light and governs Her idea, man, and the universe, and governs them harmoniously. Mind forms the ideas that subdivide and radiate their borrowed light, which explains this Scripture, — “whose seed is in itself.” The ideas multiply, but Mind constitutes and creates them. This metaphysics understood shows that the sublimity and magnitude of creation, are its simplicity: He spake and it was done. ”

“ Yet it is easy, when we come to deal in Metaphysics with the nature of ultimate Reality, to forget this, and to suppose that the certainty with which we can say that the ultimately Real is an experience justifies us in wholesale dogmatising about the special character of that experience. ”

“ Without in any way countenancing such an isolation of metaphysics from the positive sciences, we may, nevertheless, adopt the modern division in substance and in practice. While recognizing the intimate connexion between the special sciences and metaphysics in all its branches, we may regard as General Metaphysics all inquiries into the fundamental principles of being and of knowing, of reality and of knowledge; and as Special Metaphysics the philosophical study of physical nature, of human nature, and of God, the Author and Supreme Cause of all finite reality. ”

“ While, then, acknowledging in a spirit of homage savoring of of awe the abstract grandeur of the metaphysical intellect and the aims of its activity, he has earnestly but not irreverently inquired. Do you metaphysicians not deceive yourselves? ”

“ The most generally accepted theory of the western scientists is that the spirits employ what is called the "psychic force" of the medium, often assisted by that drawn from the circle and focused in the medium. The medium is regarded as a psychic storage battery which is freely drawn upon by the manifesting spirit. The degree and character of the manifestations are determined largely by the peculiar quality of the psychic force, the capabilities of the medium, the knowledge and powers of the spirits, and the influence of the sitters. ”

“ This will become more apparent as we proceed.
"Our apprehension of the perception of matter,"—this, then, is the whole given fact with which metaphysic has to deal. And this fact metaphysic proceeds to analyse into a subjective and an objective factor—giving to the human mind that part of the datum which belongs to the human mind, and withholding from the human mind that part of the datum to which it has no proper or exclusive claim. But at what point in the datum does metaphysic insert the dissecting knife, or introduce the solvent which is to effect the proposed dualisation? ”

“ To be a metaphysician one must push one's thinking to the uttermost boundaries, and one must not rest satisfied with any first appearances, or any common-sense or conventional conclusions. But there is no unnecessary connection whatever between metaphysics and the doctrine that reality is mysterious or transcendent or supernatural or anything of the kind. ”