Chapter XIII (part 5)

When such a sequence touches the life of a man or that of a human society, we perceive clearly that it escapes from the "physical sphere" and returns into it. Regarding the matter from this standpoint we see that, just as in the life of one man and in the life of a society there are many streams, at times appearing on the surface and spouting up in boisterous torrents, and at other times disappearing deep underground, hidden from view, but only waiting for their moment to appear again on the surface, so do we observe in the world continuous chains of phenomena and we perceive how these chains shift from one order of phenomena to another without a break. We observe how the phenomena of consciousness—thoughts, feelings, desires—are accompanied by p. 150 physiological phenomena—creating them perhaps—and inaugurate a series of purely physical phenomena; and we see how physical phenomena, becoming the object of sensations of sight, hearing, touch, smell and the like, induce physiological phenomena, and then psychological. But looking at life from that side, we see only physical phenomena, and having assured ourselves that it is the only reality we may not notice the others at all. Herein appears the enormous power of suggestion in current ideas. To a sincere positivist any metaphysical argument proving the unreality of matter or energy seems sophistry. It strikes him as a thing unnecessary, disagreeable, hindering a logical train of thought, an assault without aim or meaning on that which in his opinion is firmly established, alone immutable, lying at the foundation of everything. He vexedly fans away from himself all "idealistic" or "mystical" theories as he would a buzzing mosquito. But the fact is that thought and energy are different in substance and cannot be one and the same thing , because they are different sides of one and the same thing. For if we open the cranium of a living man in order to observe all the vibrations of the cells of the gray matter of the brain, and all the quivering white fibres, in spite of everything there will be merely motion , i.e., the manifestation of energy, and thought will remain somewhere beyond the limits of investigation, retreating like a shadow at every approach. The "positivist," when he begins to realize this, feels that the ground is quaking underneath his feet, feels that by his method be will never approach to the thought . Then he sees clearly the necessity for a new method. As soon as he begins to think about it he begins quite unexpectedly to notice things around him which he did not see before. His eyes begin to open to that which he did not wish to see before. The walls which he had erected around himself begin to fall one after another, and behind the falling walls infinite horizons of possible knowledge , hitherto undreamed of, unroll before him. Thereupon he completely alters his view of everything surrounding him. He understands that the visible is produced by the invisible ; and that without understanding the invisible it is impossible to understand the visible. His "positivism" begins to totter and, if he is a man with a bold thought, then in some splendid p. 151 moment he will perceive those things which he was wont to regard as real and true to be unreal and false, and those things regarded as false to be real and true. First of all he will see that manifested physical phenomena often hide themselves, like a stream that has gone underground. Yet they do not disappear altogether, but continue to exist in latent form in some minds, in someone's memory, in the words or books of someone, just as the future harvest is latent in the seeds. And thereafter they again burst into light; out of this latent state they come into an apparent one, making a roar, reverberation, motion. We observe such transitions of the invisible into the visible in the personal life of man, in the life of peoples, and in the history of humanity.