Chapter XII (part 4)

______ If we would correlate all of the above with the principle of physics that the amount of energy is constant , then we must state more exactly that in the preceding discussion nothing has been said of the creation of new energy, but of the liberation of latent force. And we have found that the liberating force of life and thought is infinitely greater than the liberating force of mechanical motion and of chemical reactions. The microscopic living cell is more powerful than a volcano—the idea is more powerful than the geological cataclysm . Having established these differences between phenomena, let us endeavor to discover what phenomena themselves represent, taken by themselves, independently of our receptivity and sensation of them. We at once discover that we know nothing about them. We know a phenomenon just as much and just as far as it is irritation , i.e., to the extent that it provokes sensation. The positivistic philosophy sees mechanical motion or electromagnetic energy as the basis of all phenomena. But the hypothesis of vibrating atoms or of units of energy —electrons and cycles of motion, combinations of which create different "phenomena"—is only an hypothesis, built upon a perfectly arbitrary and artificial assumption concerning the existence of the world in time and space. Just as soon as we discover that the conditions of time and space are merely the properties of our sensuous receptivity, we absolutely destroy the validity of the hypothesis of "energy" as the foundation of everything; because time and space are necessary for energy, i.e., it is necessary for time and space to be properties of the world and not properties of consciousness. Thus in reality we know nothing about the causes of phenomena . We do know that some combinations of causes, acting through the organism upon our consciousness, produce the series of sensations which we recognize as a green tree . But we do not know if p. 142 this perception of a tree corresponds to the real substance of the causes which evoked this sensation. The question concerning the relation of the phenomenon to the thing-in-itself , i.e., to the indwelling reality, has been from far back the chief and most difficult concern of philosophy. Can we, studying phenomena, get at the very cause of them, at the very substance of things? Kant has said definitely: No!—by studying phenomena we do not even approach to the understanding of things in themselves. Recognizing the correctness of Kant's view, if we desire to approach to an understanding of things in themselves, we must seek an entirely different method, an utterly different path from that which positive science, which studies phenomena , is treading.