Part 7

The theory we have suggested enables us to proceed at once to a rational explanation of Sensation.

Sensation is obstructed action. A detailed consideration of as many as you like to take of the myriad constituents of our sensible Experience will continually and without exception confirm this simple fact.

In Nature it is the potent action which is real. It alone can be directly represented by the activity of Thought. The mere obstruction of activity is not a real thing, hence the unreal character of Sensation. Yet the obstruction being an obstruction of the real action of Nature is, if not real, at least actual and immediate. Nay, its presence in our Experience, however mutable and unstable it may be, is the only sure test and guarantee of Reality.

Each of the two leading theories which have dominated speculation presents one partial aspect of the truth.

The eternal cognisable element of Reality is apprehended, as the Platonist holds, by the intellect and by the intellect alone. To that extent the Platonist is right. That cognisable element is Action. But Action is denoted for us only in the obstructions which it encounters. These obstructions constitute our World of Sensible Experience, which is therefore for each of us the sure indicator of the Real. In recognising this fact the sensationalist is right in his turn.

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Not only does the dynamic conception of Nature enable us to account for Sensation, but it lets us see how the Sensible World becomes a constituent of Experience. It is by and through its obstructions and these only that we featurise or denote our Experience. It is by the breaks, the turnings in the road that we cognise its course. It is by the line of rocks and breakers that we define the shore. But we must not mistake the turnings for the roadway nor the shore for the ocean.

It is in and by our activity that we discover this World of sensible obstructions. The features of the Sensible World correspond therefore to the laws of our exertional activity, but the correspondence is relational, not resemblant. Just so, it is by the reflection of Light that we discover the forms of the obstacle which solid bodies oppose to the radiant undulation. The resultant colours correspond to the form of these obstructions; but the correspondence is relational not resemblant. The same is true of sounds, of tactual sensations, of every other sensible obstacle to pure activity.

By the clouds of smoke we follow or used to follow the progress of the battle, but the battle is something other than a cloud of smoke.

We are, as Plato told us in his famous allegory, like prisoners in a cave--our attitude averted from the aperture, and it is only by the shadows cast upon the cavern wall that we can interpret the events which are transacting themselves outside.

In one sense, therefore, the whole sensible and spatial World is real. At least it is actual; and it affords us the materials from which we construct our scheme of phenomena, and by which the kinetic process of Reality is denoted and conceived.

The question ever and anon occurs to us--How upon this view can we solve the problem of transcendence? How even on this view of the case do we manage to get beyond ourselves? How are we in any way helped thereto by the fact that Reality consists in potent action rather than in Sensation?

Again, the answer is significant. In action, that is, in exertional action, we are really part of a larger whole. Our exertional action is ab initio mingled in and forms really an integral part of the dynamic system in which our life is involved. The ever operative forces of Gravity, Cohesion, Chemical Affinity, and so forth are the phenomenal expression of the laws of energetic transmutation in which we partake and of which we are organically a part, however apparently separate and disparate our bodies may seem to be. It is life and feeling, not action, which really distinguish the individual from his environment, at least from his material dynamic environment. Be it noted that what is required is not an explanation of how we transcend Experience. That by no effort can we ever do in Knowledge. All we are required to explain is how we transcend our Thought and our Sensibility. The answer is: Our Experience begins in action, and it begins therefore in a sphere which is beyond the mere subjective Consciousness, and yet is organically one with the organs of Cognition and Feeling.

It is only by a visual fiction that we come to regard our active selves as distinct from the dynamic system. We cannot, in fact, shake off the bonds of corporeality, of gravity, of all the various restraints of our organic activity.

Relatively, however, the cerebral activity of Thought is liberated from the stresses of the dynamic environment; hence the apparent freedom and independence, under certain conditions, of Thought, Imagination, and Volition.

A great difficulty in realising this view of Experience is to be found in the apparent Solidity and Inertia of material bodies. Sensible experiences group themselves round these constancies. But a material body, when its sensible concomitants are abstracted, is nothing more than a permanent process of energy transmutation the interruption of which in one form or another may originate Sensation. It follows that the world of spatially extended bodies is a homogeneous and consistent whole, reflecting in its laws and forms the real operations by which it is constituted and sustained. But all this actual World is nevertheless phenomenal only, albeit the phenomena are derived from and related to the Real as change is to the thing which changes.

To a large extent we are misled by the impressive prominence of the visual data. In vision we are presented with a system of inter-related and simultaneously occurring sensations which we find by experience to be the sure and certain indicators of the potent obstructions which our activity encounters. For this reason we habitually make use of the visual sign as the guide and instrument of our exertional activity, and this habitual use leads us to regard the visual presentation as the essential form of Reality. However sure we are that that is a false view, it yet is very difficult to retrace our steps and re-enter the elemental darkness which involves the blind.

The philosophic value of the interpretation of Experience by the blind ought therefore to be very great. Observations made on the experiences of the blind and of those to whom vision has been restored are not very numerous, but many of these recorded by Plainer, the friend of Leibniz, and others are of the highest value, and remarkably confirm the view for which we have been contending.

Undoubtedly, so far as we are aware, the most valuable contribution to this aspect of the discussion is to be found in a little volume recently published in Paris under the title Le Monde des Aveugles. The author, M. Pierre Villey, is himself blind. In the interests of Science he has cast aside the delicacy and reserve which have generally prevented the blind from analysing or at least from discussing the import of their experiences. He is also fortunately possessed of a philosophic and highly cultivated intellect, and has not failed to make himself acquainted with the general course of metaphysical speculation.

The present writer has been in correspondence with M. Villey, whose conclusions remarkably confirm the view for which this essay contends, and he finds that M. Villey recognises the truth of that view. Individual quotations would only detract from the cumulative effect of his argument, but we may refer in particular to the interesting discussion as to the relations between the space concepts of the blind and those of the vident. The blind can be taught, and are taught, geometry, and can discuss and understand spatial and geometrical problems. The sensible furniture by which the spatial conceptions of the blind are denoted obviously cannot be visual, and are no doubt largely tactual, whilst on the other hand the vident utilise the visual data to the almost total exclusion of any other. There must therefore be some common measure by means of which a community is established between the spatial conceptions of the blind and those of the vident. M. Villey concludes and clearly shows that the common medium is to be found in the fact that our spatial conceptions are fundamentally based upon and are expressive of the discoveries of our exertional activity. Touch, in short, is an ambiguous term and includes both passive sensations and those forms of Activity which we describe when we use the term "feel" as a transitive verb. Just as we distinguish between seeing and looking or between hearing and listening, so should we distinguish between touch passive and touch active or palpation.

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The view of Science which we have endeavoured to explain has received a notable confirmation from the establishment during the latter part of the nineteenth century of the scientific doctrine of Energy.[69:1]

The culmination of the scientific fabric of which Galileo and Newton laid the foundations was reached when it was demonstrated that the whole physical universe must be regarded as composed of Energy, either kinetic and actually undergoing transmutation from one form to another, or potential and quiescent yet containing within itself the quantifiable capacity of transformation. The objective correlatives of the different classes of sensible experiences are found to be different forms which this Energy assumes--the kinetic energy of a mass in motion, the radiant energy of Light, the energy of Heat, the potential energy of chemical separation, etc.--all these have now at length been shown to be forms of one real thing capable under appropriate conditions of being transmuted into each other and of which not only the inter-transmutability but the equivalent values can be calculated and have been found by experiment to be fixed and definite. Thus the mechanical equivalent of heat is a fixed and definite quantity. The Energy of a body in motion can be measured and stated in terms of mass and velocity.

The profound conception of Aristotle, under which Nature was regarded as a potent Energy containing within itself the capacity of generating the phenomenal World, has again been revived and realised--but with great additions. The theory in the hands of Science is now not only confirmed by incessant experiment, but the relation which it affirms between reality and phenomenon has been quantified.

Moreover, the actual operations under which the potential generates the actual have, so to say, been laid bare to view; and lastly, the inter-transmutability of all forms of Energy and its real unity have been established.

The doctrine has therefore received a confirmation of which Aristotle did not dream, and its explanation has at the same time received an illumination which his vague if profound adumbration could never afford. With this added support the true conception of human knowledge has received new strength. The theory is still, nevertheless, not to be grasped without a resolute effort of reflection. It involves an inversion of our everyday conceptions more radical than that which was demanded by the Copernican theory of astronomy, and we know that that theory--offered to and rejected by mankind before the beginning of the Christian era--had to wait through sixteen or seventeen hundred years before it secured an acceptance, at first grudging and even now not always adequate.

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The ordinary metaphysical student has hitherto rather resented the idea that in order to a true solution of the problem of Knowledge he must acquaint himself with the fundamental conceptions of physics. Yet so it is. It may perhaps be hoped that when the first strangeness of the new position has disappeared the conditions may be accepted with greater readiness. At any rate, a correct apprehension of our fundamental conceptions of the world of our external experience is indispensable. No theory can wholly dispense with such conceptions. It is therefore essential that, however elementary, they should be clear and not contradictory. Philosophy has always vaguely realised and exacted as much. The need is now imperative.