Chapter XIII (part 4)

Materialism and energetics are those "obvious" theories which cannot be true without proofs , because they cannot not have proofs if they contain even a little grain of truth. But there are no proofs at the disposition of these theories; quite the reverse: the infinitely greater potentiality of the phenomena of life and the psyche compared with physical phenomena assures us of the exact opposite. The simple fact, above shown, of the enormous liberating, unbinding force of psychic phenomena is sufficient to establish quite really and firmly the problem of the world of the hidden . And the world of the hidden cannot be the world of unconscious mechanical motion, of unconscious development of electro-magnetic forces. The positivistic theory admits the possibility of explaining the higher through the lower , the invisible through the visible . But it has been shown at the very beginning that this is the explanation of one unknown by another unknown. There is still less justification for explaining the known through the unknown . Yet that "lower" (matter and motion) through which the positivists strive to explain the "higher" (life and thought) is itself unknown . Consequently it is impossible to explain and define anything else in terms of it, while the higher , i.e., the thought , this is our sole known : it is this alone that we do know, that we are conscious of in ourselves, that we can neither mistake nor doubt. And if thought can evoke or unbind physical energy, and motion can never create or unbind thought (out of a revolving wheel no thought ever arose) so of course we shall strive to define, not the higher in terms of the lower, but the lower in terms of the higher. If the invisible, like the contents of a book or the purpose of a watch , defines by itself the visible, so also we shall endeavor to understand not the visible, but the invisible. Starting from a false assumption concerning the mechanicality of the noumenal side of nature, positive science, upon which the view of the world of the intelligent majority of contemporary humanity is founded, makes still another mistake in regard to cause and effect, or the law of functions—that is, it mistakes what is cause, and what is effect. ______ p. 149 Just as the two-dimensional plane-man thinks of all phenomena touching his consciousness as lying on one plane, so the positivistic method strives to interpret upon one plane all phenomena of different orders, i.e., to interpret all visible phenomena as the effects of antecedent visible phenomena, and as the inevitable cause of subsequent visible phenomena. In other words, it sees in causal and functional interdependence merely phenomena proceeding upon the surface, and studies the visible world, or the phenomena of the visible world, not admitting that causes can enter into this world which are not contained in it or that the phenomena of this world can possess functions extending beyond it. But this could be true only in case there were no phenomena of life and of thought in the world, or if the phenomena of life and thought were really derivatives from physical phenomena, and did not possess infinitely greater latent force than they. Then only should we have the right to consider the chains of phenomena in their physical or visible sequence alone, as positivistic philosophy does. But taking into consideration the phenomena of life and thought we shall inevitably recognize that the chain of phenomena often translates itself from a sequence purely physical to a biological sequence, i.e., one in which there is much of the hidden and in-visible to us—or to a psychical sequence where there is even more of the hidden; but during reverse translations from biological and psychical spheres into physical sequences actions proceed often, if not always, from regions which are hidden from us; i.e., the cause of the visible is the invisible. In consequence of this we must admit that it is impossible to consider the chains of sequences in the world of physical phenomena only.