Chapter XVI (part 7)

From the STANDPOINT OF LOGIC such a theory is more correct than the theory of two classes of actions—REASONED AND UN-REASONED. It at least establishes the principle of NECESSARY UNIFORMITY. It is really impossible to suppose that in an immense machine certain parts move according to their own desire and reasoning; there must be something uniform—either all parts of the machine possess a consciousness of their function and act according to this consciousness, or all are worked from one motor and are driven by one transmission. The enormous service per-formed by positivism is that it established this principle of uniformity. It is left to us to define in what this uniformity consists. The positivistic hypothesis of the world considers that the basis of everything is unconscious energy , which arose from unknown causes at a time that is not known. This energy, after it has passed through a whole series of invisible electro-magnetic and physico-chemical processes, is expressed for us in visible and sensed motion, then in growth, i.e., in the phenomena of life, and at last in psychic phenomena. This view has been already investigated and the conclusion reached that it is impossible to regard physical phenomena as the cause of PSYCHIC PHENOMENA, while on the other hand, psychic phenomena serve as an undoubted cause for a great number of the physical phenomena observed by us. The observed process of p. 187 origination of psychic phenomena under the influence of outside mechanical impulses does not at all mean that physical phenomena create psychic phenomena. Such do not constitute the cause, but are merely a shock, disturbing the balance. In order that outer shocks may evoke psychic phenomena an organism is necessary, i.e., a complex and animated life. The cause of psychic life lies in the organism, its animatedness, which can be defined as a potential of psychic life. Then, from the very essence of the idea of motion—which is the foundation of the physico-mechanical world—was deduced the conclusion that motion is not an entirely obvious truth, that the idea of motion arose in us because of the limitation and in-completeness of our sense of space (a slit through which we observe the world). And it was established, not that the idea of time is deduced from the observation of motion, but that the idea of motion results from our "time-sense"—and that the idea of motion is quite definitely the function of the " time-sense ," which in itself is a limit or boundary of the space-sense belonging to a being of a given psyche. It was also established that the idea of motion could arise out of a comparison between two different fields of consciousness. And in general, all analysis of the fundamental categories of our knowledge of the world—space and time—showed that we have absolutely no data whatever for accepting motion as the fundamental principle of the world. And if this is so—if it is impossible to assume behind the scenes of the creation of the world the presence of an unconscious mechanical motor—then it is necessary to consider the world as living and rational. Because one or the other of two things must be true: either it is mechanical and dead—"accidental"—or it is living and animated. There can be nothing dead in living nature and there can be nothing living in dead nature. Nature exhibits a continual progress, starting from the mechanical and chemical activity of the inorganic world, proceeding to the vegetable, with its dull enjoyment of self, from that to the animal world, where intelligence and consciousness began at first very weak, and only after many intermediate stages attaining its last great development in man, whose intellect is nature's crowning point, the goal of all her efforts, the most perfect and difficult of all her works. p.