Chapter III: The “first Principles” of the “knowable.”

As might be expected from Spencer’s treatment of the _unknowable_, the _knowable_ will prove a confused affair; especially since to the above-mentioned “inscrutability” of the absolute, he adds the doctrine of an “obscure consciousness of it,” holding, in fact, that the knowable is only a relative, and that it cannot be known without at the same time possessing a knowledge of the unknowable.

(P. 82) he says: “A thought involves relation, difference and likeness; whatever does not present each of them does not admit of cognition. And hence we may say that the unconditioned as presenting none of these, is trebly unthinkable.” And yet he says, (p. 96): “The relative is itself inconceivable except as related to a real non-relative.”

We will leave this infinite self-contradiction thus developed, and turn to the positions established concerning the knowable. They concern the nature of Force, Matter and Motion, and the predicates set up are “persistence,” “indestructibility” and similar.

THE KNOWABLE.

Although in the first part “conceivability” was shown to be utterly inadequate as a test of truth; that with it we could not even establish that the earth is round, or that space is infinitely continuous, yet here Mr. Spencer finds that inconceivability is the most convenient of all positive proofs.

The first example to be noticed is his proof of the compressibility of matter (p. 51): “It is an established mechanical truth that if a body moving at a given velocity, strikes an equal body at rest in such wise that the two move on together, their joint velocity will be but half that of the striking body. Now it is a law of which the negative is inconceivable, that in passing from any one degree of magnitude to another all intermediate degrees must be passed through. Or in the case before us, a body moving at velocity 4, cannot, by collision, be reduced to velocity 2, without passing through all velocities between 4 and 2. But were matter truly solid—were its units absolutely incompressible and in unbroken contact—this ‘law of continuity, as it is called, would be broken in every case of collision. For when, of two such units, one moving at velocity 4 strikes another at rest, the striking unit must have its velocity 4 instantaneously reduced to velocity 2; must pass from velocity 4 to velocity 2 without any lapse of time, and without passing through intermediate velocities; must be moving with velocities 4 and 2 at the same instant, which is impossible.” On page 57 he acknowledges that any transition from one rate of motion to another is inconceivable; hence it does not help the matter to “pass through intermediate velocities.” It is just as great a contradiction and just as inconceivable that velocity 4 should become velocity 3.9999+, as it is that it should become velocity 2; for no change whatever of the motion can be thought (as he confesses) without having two motions in one time. Motion, in fact, is the synthesis of place and time, and cannot be comprehended except as their unity. The argument here quoted is only adduced by Mr. S. for the purpose of antithesis to other arguments on the other side as weak as itself.

On page 241, Mr. Spencer deals with the question of the destructibility of matter: “The annihilation of matter is unthinkable for the same reason that the creation of matter is unthinkable.” (P. 54): “Matter in its ultimate nature is as absolutely incomprehensible as space and time.” The nature of matter is unthinkable, its creation or destructibility is unthinkable, and in this style of reasoning we can add that its _indestructibility_ is likewise unthinkable; in fact the argument concerning self-existence will apply here. (P. 31): “Self-existence necessarily means existence without a beginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is to form a conception of existence without a beginning. Now by no mental effort can we do this. To conceive existence through infinite past time, implies the conception of infinite past time, which is an impossibility.” Thus, too, we might argue in a strain identical; indestructibility implies existence through infinite future time, but by no mental effort can infinite time be conceived. And thus, too, we prove and disprove the persistence of force and motion. When occasion requires, the ever-convenient argument of “inconceivability” enters. It reminds one of Sir Wm. Hamilton’s “imbecility” upon which are based “sundry of the most important phenomena of intelligence,” among which he mentions the category of causality. If causality is founded upon imbecility, and all experience upon _it_, it follows that all empirical knowledge rests upon imbecility.

On page 247, our author asserts that the first law of motion “is in our day being merged in the more general one, that motion, like matter, is indestructible.” It is interesting to observe that this so-called “First law of motion” rests on no better basis than very crude reflection.

“When not influenced by external forces, a moving body will go on in a straight line with a uniform velocity,” is Spencer’s statement of it.

This abstract, supposed law has necessitated much scaffolding in Natural Philosophy that is otherwise entirely unnecessary; it contradicts the idea of momentum, and is thus refuted:

I. A body set in motion continues in motion after the impulse has ceased from without, for the reason that it retains momentum.

II. Momentum is the product of weight by velocity, and weight is the attraction of the body in question to another body external to it. If all bodies external to the moving body were entirely removed, the latter would have no weight, and hence the product of weight by velocity would be zero.

III. The “external influences” referred to in the so-called “law,” mean chiefly attraction. Since no body could have momentum except through weight, another name for attraction, it follows that all free motion has reference to another body, and hence is curvilinear; thus we are rid of that embarrassing “straight line motion” which gives so much trouble in mechanics. It has all to be reduced back again through various processes to curvilinear movement.

We come, finally, to consider the central point of this system:

THE CORRELATION OF FORCES.

Speaking of persistence of force, Mr. Spencer concedes (p. 252) that this doctrine is not demonstrable from experience. He says (p. 254): “Clearly the persistence of force is an ultimate truth of which no inductive proof is possible.” (P. 255): “By the persistence of force we really mean the persistence of some power which transcends our knowledge and conception.” (P. 257): “The indestructibility of matter and the continuity of motion we saw to be really corollaries from the impossibility of establishing in thought a relation between something and nothing.” (Thus what was established as a mental impotence is now made to have objective validity.) “Our inability to conceive matter and motion destroyed is our inability to suppress consciousness itself.” (P. 258): “Whoever alleges that the inability to conceive a beginning or end of the universe is a _negative_ result of our mental structure, cannot deny that our consciousness of the universe as persistent is a positive result of our mental structure. And this persistence of the universe is the persistence of that unknown cause, power, or force, which is manifested to us through all phenomena.” This “positive result of our mental structure” is said to rest on our “inability to conceive the limitation of consciousness” which is “simply the obverse of our inability to put an end to the thinking subject while still continuing to think.” (P. 257): “To think of something becoming nothing, would involve that this substance of consciousness having just existed under a given form, should next assume no form, or should cease to be consciousness.”

It will be observed here that he is endeavoring to solve the First Antinomy of Kant, and that his argument in this place differs from Kant’s proof of the “Antithesis” in this, that while Kant proves that “The world [or universe] has no beginning,” etc., by the impossibility of the origination of anything in a “void time,” that Mr. Spencer proves the same thing by asserting it to be a “positive result of our mental structure,” and then proceeds to show that this is a sort of “inability” which has a subjective explanation; it is, according to him, merely the “substance of consciousness” objectified and regarded as the law of reality.

But how is it with the “Thesis” to that Antinomy, “The world _has_ a beginning in time?” Kant proves this apagogically by showing the absurdity of an “infinite series already elapsed.” That our author did not escape the contradiction has already been shown in our remarks upon the “indestructibility of matter.” While he was treating of the unknowable it was his special province to prove that self-existence is unthinkable. (P. 31): He says it means “existence without a beginning,” and “to conceive existence through infinite past time, implies the conception of infinite past time, which is an impossibility.” Thus we have the Thesis of the Antinomy supported in his doctrine of the “unknowable,” and the antithesis of the same proved in the doctrine of the knowable.

We shall next find him involved with Kant’s Third Antinomy.

The doctrine of the correlation is stated in the following passages:

(P. 280): “Those modes of the unknowable, which we call motion, heat, light, chemical affinity, etc., are alike transformable into each other, and into those modes of the unknowable which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, thought: these, in their turns, being directly or indirectly re-transformable into the original shapes. That no idea or feeling arises, save as a result of some physical force expended in producing it, is fast becoming a common-place of science; and whoever duly weighs the evidence, will see that nothing but an overwhelming bias in favor of a preconceived theory can explain its non-acceptance. How this metamorphosis takes place—how a force existing as motion, heat, or light, can become a mode of consciousness—how it is possible for aërial vibrations to generate the sensation we call sound, or for the forces liberated by chemical changes in the brain to give rise to emotion—these are mysteries which it is impossible to fathom.” (P. 284): “Each manifestation of force can be interpreted only as the effect of some antecedent force; no matter whether it be an inorganic action, an animal movement, a thought, or a feeling. Either this must be conceded, or else it must be asserted that our successive states of consciousness are self-created.” “Either mental energies as well as bodily ones are quantitatively correlated to certain energies expended in their production, and to certain other energies they initiate; or else nothing must become something and something, nothing. Since persistence of force, being a _datum_ of consciousness, cannot be denied, its unavoidable corollary must be accepted.”

On p. 294 he supports the doctrine that “motion takes the direction of the least resistance,” mentally as well as physically.

Here are some of the inferences to be drawn from the passages quoted:

1. Every act is determined from without, and hence does not belong to the subject in which it manifests itself.

2. To change the course of a force, is to make another direction “that of the least resistance,” or to remove or diminish a resistance.

3. But to change a resistance requires force, which (in motion) must act in “the direction of the least resistance,” and hence it is entirely determined from without, and governed by the disposition of the forces it meets.

4. Hence, of _will_, it is an absurdity to talk; _freedom_ or _moral agency_ is an impossible phantom.

5. That there is self-determination in self-consciousness—that it is “self-created”—is to Mr. Spencer the absurd alternative which at once turns the scale in favor of the doctrine that mental phenomena are the productions of external forces.

After this, what are we to say of the following? (P. 501): “Notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary, there will probably have arisen in not a few minds the conviction that the solutions which have been given, along with those to be derived from them, are essentially materialistic. Let none persist in these misconceptions.” (P. 502): “Their implications are no more materialistic than they are spiritualistic, and no more spiritualistic than they are materialistic.”

If we hold these positions by the side of Kant’s Third Antinomy, we shall see that they all belong to the proof of the “Antithesis,” viz: “There is no freedom, but everything in the world happens according to the laws of nature.” The “Thesis,” viz: “That a causality of freedom is necessary to account fully for the phenomena of the world,” he has not anywhere supported. We find, in fact, only those thinkers who have in some measure mastered the third phase of culture in thought, standing upon the basis presented by Kant in the Thesis. The chief point in the Thesis may be stated as follows: 1. If everything that happens presupposes a previous condition, (which the law of causality states,) 2. This previous condition cannot be a permanent (or have been always in existence); for, if so, its consequence, or the effect, would have always existed. Thus the previous condition must be a thing which has happened. 3. With this the whole law of causality collapses; for (_a_) since each cause is an effect, (_b_) its determining power escapes into a higher member of the series, and, (_c_) unless the law changes, wholly vanishes; there result an indefinite series of effects with no cause; each member of the series is a dependent, has its being in another, which again has its being in another, and hence cannot support the subsequent term.

Hence it is evident that this Antinomy consists, first: in the setting up of the law of causality as having absolute validity, which is the antithesis. Secondly, the experience is made that such absolute law of causality is a self-nugatory one, and thus it is to be inferred that causality, to be at all, presupposes an origination in a “self-moved,” as Plato calls it. Aristotle (Metaphysics, xi. 6-7, and ix. 8) exhibits this ultimate as the “self-active,” and the Scholastics take the same, under the designation “_actus purus_,” for the definition of God.

The Antinomy thus reduced gives:

I. Thesis: Self-determination must lie at the basis of all causality, otherwise causality cannot be at all.

II. Antithesis: If there is self-determination, “the unity of experience (which leads us to look for a cause) is destroyed, and hence no such case could arise in experience.”

In comparing the two proofs it is at once seen that they are of different degrees of universality. The argument of the Thesis is based upon the nature of the thing itself, i. e. a pure thought; while that of the Antithesis loses sight of the idea of “_efficient_” cause, and seeks mere continuity in the sequence of time, and thus exhibits itself as the second stage of thought, which leans on the staff of fancy, i. e. mere _representative_ thinking. This “unity of experience,” as Kant calls it, is the same thing, stated in other words, that Spencer refers to as the “positive result of our mental structure.” In one sense those are true antinomies—those of Kant, Hamilton, _et al._—viz. in this: that the “_representative_” stage of thinking finds itself unable to shake off the sensuous picture, and think “_sub quadam specie æternitatis_.” To the mind disciplined to the third stage of thought, these are no antinomies; Spinoza, Leibnitz, Plato and Aristotle are not confused by them. The Thesis, properly stated, is a true universal, and exhibits its own truth, as that upon which the law of causality rests; and hence the antithesis itself—less universal—resting upon the law of causality, is based upon the Thesis. Moreover, the Thesis does not deny an infinite succession in time and space, it only states that there must be an efficient cause—just what the law of causality states, but shows, in addition, that this efficient cause must be a “self-determined.”

On page 282 we learn that, “The solar heat is the final source of the force manifested by society.” “It (the force of society) is based on animal and vegetable products, and these in turn are dependent on the light and heat of the sun.”

As an episode in this somewhat abstract discussion, it may be diverting to notice the question of priority of discovery, touched upon in the following note (p. 454): “Until I recently consulted his ‘Outlines of Astronomy’ on another question, I was not aware that, so far back as 1833, Sir John Herschel had enunciated the doctrine that ‘the sun’s rays are the ultimate source of almost every motion which takes place on the surface of the earth.’ He expressly includes all geologic, meteorologic, and vital actions; as also those which we produce by the combustion of coal. The late George Stephenson appears to have been wrongly credited with this last idea.”

In order to add to the thorough discussion of this important question, we wish to suggest the claims of Thomas Carlyle, who, as far back as 1830, wrote the following passage in his _Sartor Resartus_ (Am. ed. pp. 55-6): “Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: ‘If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the Universe, God is there.’ Thou, too, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no psalmist, but a prosaist, knowing God only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at least force is not? The drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; already, on the wings of the north wind, it is nearing the tropic of Cancer. How it came to evaporate and not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless, without force, and dead?

“As I rode through the Schwartzwald, I said to myself: That little fire which glows starlike across the dark-growing (nachtende) moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost horseshoe—is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the whole universe, or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was primarily kindled at the sun; is fed by air that circulates from beyond Noah’s deluge, from beyond the Dog star; it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre in the great vital system of immensity.”

We have, finally, to consider the correlation theory in connection with equilibrium.

I. Motion results from destroyed equilibrium. The whole totality does not correspond to itself, its ideal and real contradict each other. The movement is the restoring of the equilibrium, or the bringing into unity of the ideal and real. To illustrate: a spring (made of steel, rubber, or any elastic material) has a certain form in which, it may exist without tension; this may be called the ideal shape, or simply the ideal. If the spring is forced to assume another shape, its real shape becomes different from the ideal; its equilibrium is destroyed, and force is manifested as a tendency to restore the equilibrium (or unity of the ideal and real). Generalize this: all forces have the same nature; (_a_) _expansive_ forces arise from the ideal existing without—a gas, steam, for example, ideally takes up a more extended space than it has really; it expands to fill it. Or (_b_) contractive forces: the multiplicity ideally exists within; e. g. attraction of gravitation; matter trying to find the centre of the earth, its ideal. The will acts in this way: The ideal is changed first, and draws the real after it. I first destroy, in thought and will, the identity of ideal and real; the tension resulting is force. Thinking, since it deals with the universal (or the potential _and_ the actual) is an original source of force, and, as will result in the sequel from a reverse analysis (see below, V. 3, _c_) the _only_ source of force.

II. Persistence of force requires an unrestorable equilibrium; in moving to restore one equilibrium, it must destroy another—its equivalent.

III. But this contradicts the above developed conception of force as follows: (_a_) Since force results from destroyed equilibrium, it follows (_b_) that it requires as much force to destroy the equilibrium as is developed in the restoring of it (and this notion is the basis of the correlation theory). But (_c_) if the first equilibrium (already destroyed) can only be restored by the destroying of another equal to the same, it has already formed an equilibrium with the second, and the occasion of the motion is removed.

If two forces are equal and opposed, which will give way?

By this dialectic consideration of force, we learn the insufficiency of the theory of correlation as the ultimate truth. Instead of being “the sole truth, which transcends experience by underlying it” (p. 258), we are obliged to confess that this “persistence of force” rests on the category of causality; its thin disguise consists in the substitution of other words for the metaphysical expression, “Every effect must be equal to its cause.” And this, when tortured in the crucible, confesses that the only efficient cause is “_causi sui_;” hence the effect is equal to its cause, because it is the cause.

And the correlation theory results in showing that force cannot be, unless self-originated.

That self-determination is the inevitable result, no matter what hypothesis be assumed, is also evident. Taking all counter-hypotheses and generalizing them, we have this analysis:

I. Any and every being is determined from without through another. (This theorem includes all anti-self-determination doctrines.)

II. It results from this that any and every being is dependent upon another and is a finite one; it cannot be isolated without destroying it. Hence it results that every being is an element of a whole that includes _it_ as a subordinate moment.

III. Dependent being, as a subordinate element, cannot be said to support any thing attached to it, for its own support is not in itself but in another, namely, the whole that includes it. From this it results that no dependent being can depend upon another dependent being, but rather upon the including whole.

The including whole is therefore not a dependent; since it is for itself, and each element is determined through it, and for it, it may be called the _negative_ unity (or the unity which negates the independence of the elements).

_Remark._—A chain of dependent beings collapses into one dependent being. Dependence is not converted into independence by simple multiplication. All dependence is thus an element of an independent whole.

IV. What is the _character_ of this independent whole, this _negative unity_? “Character” means determination, and we are prepared to say that its determination cannot be through another, for then it would be a dependent, and we should be referred again to the whole, including it. Its determination by which the multiplicity of elements arises is hence its own self-determination. Thus all finitude and dependence presupposes as its condition, self-determination.

V. Self-determination more closely examined exhibits some remarkable results, (which will throw light on the discussion of “Essence and Phenomena” above):

(1.) It is “_causa sui_;” active and passive; existing dually as determining and determined; this self-diremption produces a distinction in itself which is again cancelled.

(2.) As determiner (or active, or cause), it is the pure universal—the _possibility of any_ determinations. But as _determined_ (passive or effect) it is the special, the particular, the one-sided reality that enters into change.

(3.) But it is “negative unity” of these two sides, and hence an individual. The pure universal whose negative relation to itself as determiner makes the particular, completes itself to individuality through this act.

(_a._) Since its pure universality is the substrate of its determination, and at the same time a self-related activity (or negativity), it at once becomes its own object.

(_b._) Its activity (limiting or determining)—a pure negativity—turned to itself as object, dissolves the particular in the universal, and thus continually realizes its subjectivity.

(_c._) Hence these two sides of the negative unity are more properly subject and object, and since they are identical (_causa sui_) we may name the result “self-consciousness.”

The absolute truth of all truths, then, is that self-consciousness is the form of the Total. God is a Person, or rather _the_ Person. Through His self-consciousness (thought of Himself) he makes Himself an object to Himself (Nature), and in the same act cancels it again into His own image (finite spirit), and thus comprehends Himself in this self-revelation.

Two remarks must be made here: (1.) This is not “Pantheism;” for it results that God is a Person; and secondly Nature is a self-cancelling side in the process; thirdly, the so-called “finite spirit,” or man, is immortal, since otherwise he would not be the last link of the chain; but such he is, because he can develop out of his sensuous life to pure thought, unconditioned by time and space, and hence he can surpass any _fixed_ “higher intelligence,” no matter how high created.

(2.) It is the result that all profound thinkers have arrived at.

Aristotle (Metaphysics XI. 6 & 7) carries this whole question of motion back to its presupposition in a mode of treatment, “_sub quadam specie æternitatis_.” He concludes thus: “The thinking, however, of that which is purely for itself, is a thinking of that which is most excellent in and for itself.

“The thinking thinks itself, however, through participation in that which is thought by it; it becomes this object in its own activity, in such a manner that the subject and object are identical. For the apprehending of thought and essence is what constitutes reason. The activity of thinking produces that which is perceived; so that the activity is rather that which Reason seems to have of a divine nature; speculation [pure thinking] is the most excellent employment; if, then, God is always engaged in this, as we are at times, He is admirable, and if in a higher degree, more admirable. But He _is_ in this pure thinking, and life too belongs to Him; for the activity of thought is life. He is this activity. The activity, returning into itself, is the most excellent and eternal life. We say, therefore, that God is an eternal and the best living being. So that life and duration are uninterrupted and eternal; for this is God.”

When one gets rid of those “images of sense” called by Spencer “conceivables,” and arrives at the “unpicturable notions of intelligence,” he will find it easy to reduce the vexed antinomies of force, matter, motion, time, space and causality; arriving at the fundamental principle—self-determination—he will be able to make a science of Biology. The organic realm will not yield to dualistic Reflection. Goethe is the great pioneer of the school of physicists that will spring out of the present activity of Reflection when it shall have arrived at a perception of its method.

_Resumé._—Mr. Spencer’s results, so far as philosophy is concerned, may be briefly summed up under four general heads: 1. Psychology. 2. Ontology. 3. Theology. 4. Cosmology.

PSYCHOLOGY.

(1.) Conception is a mere picture in the mind; therefore what cannot be pictured cannot be conceived; therefore the Infinite, the Absolute, God, Essence, Matter, Motion, Force—anything, in short, that involves mediation—cannot be conceived; hence they are unknowable.

(2.) Consciousness is self-knowing; but that subject and object are one, is impossible. We can neither know ourselves nor any real being.

(3.) All reasoning or explaining is the subsuming of a somewhat under a more general category; hence the highest category is unsubsumed, and hence inexplicable.

(4.) Our intellectual faculties may be improved to a certain extent, and beyond this, no amount of training can avail anything. (Biology, vol. I, p. 188.)

(5.) The “substance of consciousness” is the basis of our ideas of persistence of Force, Matter, etc.

(6.) All knowing is relative; our knowledge of this fact, however, is not relative but absolute.

ONTOLOGY.

(1.) All that we know is phenomenal. The reality passes all understanding. In the phenomenon the essence is “manifested,” but still it is not revealed thereby; it remains hidden behind it, inscrutable to our perception.

(2.) And yet, since all our knowledge is relative, we have an obscure knowledge of the hidden and inscrutable essence of the correlate of our knowledge of phenomena. We know that it exists.

(3.) Though what is inconceivable is for that reason unknowable, yet we know that persistence belongs to force, motion and matter; it is a positive result of our “mental structure,” although we cannot conceive either destructibility or indestructibility.

(4.) Though self-consciousness is an impossibility, yet it sometimes occurs, since the “substance of consciousness” is the object of consciousness when it decides upon the persistence of the Universe, and of Force, Matter, etc.

THEOLOGY.

The Supreme Being is unknown and unknowable; unrevealed and unrevealable, either naturally or supernaturally; for to reveal, requires that some one shall comprehend what is revealed. The sole doctrine of Religion of great value is the doctrine that God transcends the human intellect. When Religion professes to reveal Him to man and declare His attributes, then it is irreligious. Though God is the unknown, yet personality, reason, consciousness, etc., are degrading when applied to Him. The “Thirty-nine Articles” should be condensed into one, thus: “There is an Unknown which I know that I cannot know.“

“Religions are envelopes of truth which reveal to the lower, and conceal to the higher.” “They are modes of manifestation of the unknowable.”

COSMOLOGY.

“Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; through continuous differentiations and integrations.” This is the law of the Universe. All progresses to an equilibration—to a moving equilibrium.