Part 15
All things exist for us only in so far as they are perceptible to us. They exist as appearances, as the sum of their properties. If now the thinking mind would have anything made wholly manifest, wholly perceptible to sense--would seek to have something made wholly and entirely _appearance_, there always remains a residue that refuses to be made manifest, refuses to be made perceptible to sense. Speaking generally, one may say: Applied thought seems to conduct to a something lying at the foundation of things, to a constant in itself, of which all properties, all in things that is perceptible to sense, are only so many different expressions. The idea that all that exists does so in virtue of a constant in itself, presents itself as a _necessity of thought_, which science must oppose by every means if she would retain her title to the name of science.
Since this constant in itself is of necessity an imperceptible to sense, it imposes no restrictions upon apprehension. One is perfectly at liberty to conceive of it in quite contrary forms--as matter or substance, equally as well as under the form of force. If one holds by the former mode of conceiving it, then, whatever the guise its elaboration in thought may assume, one belongs to the school _of materialism_. If, on the contrary, one holds by the latter mode of apprehension, one then belongs, quite independent of the form its detailed elaboration in thought may assume, to the _idealistic_ school. For the correct appraisement of our whole mental life, however, it is important clearly to understand that the opposition is only an apparent one. Both alike have one common root in the idea of an _unconditioned constant_ lying at the foundation of things, which, summed up, may be designated as _the substans_ (_das Substans_) of all appearances. _The substance_, accordingly, results purely as the material form of this _substans_, while the force represents its immaterial form: the one being as well--and as ill--authenticated as the other, since one knows nothing of either, nor ever can know anything.
If now one follows up the various transformations that have taken place in this domain within historical times, one finds that, as is also the case in the domain of natural science, they occur following the law of the _inversion of positions_. Does the one school, whether it be the materialistic or the idealistic, force its way into such a preponderating position as to become intolerable to sound common-sense, it is forced to give place to its opponent, which then for a season takes the lead, only, after a longer or shorter period, to undergo a like fate. It is like a game of see-saw. All the acuteness, all the profundity, all the mental florescence which the one school has manifested in the course of centuries of labour perhaps, in this period of decline are brought to destruction, and only by ardent collectors can be rescued and preserved as a palæontological form of mental life. At bottom, the whole of philosophy up to each new “now” is nothing but a more or less tastefully-arranged palæontological collection of thought-values.
Above and alongside this play of inversions betwixt idealism and materialism--which I might call the inversion of the _lower order_--there takes place another inversion of a _higher order_.
In certain intervals the human understanding begins to offer serious resistance to both the worldviews that base themselves on the concept of _substans_ in its two possible forms--that of substance and that of force--by hastening over to one that is the contrary of both, a world-conception from which _substans_ is wholly absent, a world consisting entirely of a mass of relation-values. This latter form of world-conception alone has the right to the designation of “scientific.” For there can be no science, properly so-called, where the subject dealt with is any shape or form of an imperceptible to sense.
Now, the first inversion of the higher order with which we in our Western circles of culture are acquainted has, to be sure, a slight enough scientific cast. It is the inversion that set in with Protagoras the Sophist. With his thesis, “Man is the measure of all things--of those that are, that they are; of those that are not, that they are not”--he places himself in an attitude of opposition to both world-conceptions founded on the concept of _substans_; for in both these conceptions things, as existing in virtue of an unconditioned constant, must also be the measure of man.
The appearance of Protagoras was a naturally-resulting protest against the absurdities to which materialism and idealism had mutually driven each other. The former found its culminating point in Democritus of Abdera, who left nothing in the world but matter in the shape of atoms. The latter reached its corresponding culmination in Plato, who left nothing in the world but the immaterial _substans_, ideas, to whom thereby matter became the non-existent.
The whole procedure of Protagoras conveys the impression that his inversion was of a purely dialectical nature. For the style and manner in which he formulates his new point of view leaves to humanity for all its mental life nothing but mere opinion. His dictum as to man being the measure of all things takes no account of a natural order of things. To this perhaps may be attributed the fact that his philosophy, however arresting it may have been in his own day and time, set forth personally by this gifted mind, has yet proved itself to be but little permanent.
After the see-saw between idealism and materialism had proceeded for some two thousand years more, the new inversion of the higher order set in with a mighty whirlwind, the most powerful, the most systematically-delivered attack upon the notion of _substans_ that Western philosophy had ever experienced--the philosophy of Hume.
Hume’s philosophy, briefly stated, consists in the investigation of what exhibits itself to sense-perception considered as based on a possible content of _substans_--in unravelling it to the last thread and pointing out to his contemporaries with irrefutable clearness and acuteness, “See there, you people! a constant in itself is nowhere to be found!”
Hume is frequently alluded to as a sceptic. I consider, on the contrary, that his philosophy is the purest criticism precisely where in philosophy criticism may be practised at all--namely, upon the concept of _substans_, whether in material or immaterial form.
Every criticism of _substans_ culminates naturally in criticism of the notion of an _I_. For Hume, the _I_, the self, became a bundle, a collection of separate mental representations “that follow one another with inconceivable rapidity and are in a state of perpetual flow, continual motion.”
But a criticism of the notion of _substans_ is incomplete without a criticism of the concept of cause; for the intuition that all that exists must have an adequate cause is likewise a necessity of thought. Now, where there is a constant in itself, a _substans_ in things, causality is an actual _following after one another_ of cause and effect, this “constant in itself” being also “cause in itself” of that which happens, the latter therefore, as “effect in itself,” representing a simple following upon that cause in itself, in such sort that between the two there exists a necessary--I might almost say--a rigid dependence; whereupon the question, “How is a relation between the two possible?” becomes a problem that defies solution.
Hence it follows that one is bound to hold the problem of causality as a correlate of _substans_. If the latter falls, the former falls along with it.
As the notion of a constant in itself becomes in the criticism of Hume a simple product of imagination, so for him does the concept of causality become the simple outcome of use and wont. Because in our representation of things we frequently observe two things to follow one upon the other, we assume that a necessary dependence exists between the two. Hume solves both these problems by declaring them, without a moment’s hesitation, to have no existence at all.
After Hume, the see-saw game of the lower order went on for a time. Upon the intellectual materialism of the eighteenth century--especially as it prevailed in France, where it was represented by such men as La Mettrie and Von Holbach--there followed the idealism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. After this had exploded of its own gaseousness, the scientific materialism of the nineteenth century set in, and up to our day has continued to hold the upper hand, though now it seems to be swinging back in a new idealistic movement.
Alongside of this a new inversion of the higher order has managed to prepare itself, making its appearance in two distinct forms, of which one is the direct successor of the criticism of Hume, while the other derives from physics.
The former is modern positivism, as developed in particular by Ernst Mach and R. Avenarius. The latter is the so-called world-theory of energetics, as represented more especially by Ostwald the physicist.
Both schools partake of a purely scientific character in so far as they aim at furnishing world-theories from which a _substans_ is ruled out--seek to frame a world consisting solely of relation-values, a world in which the one thing constant is the constancy of the relations.
A third school, modern monism, as represented especially by Haeckel, is not scientific at all.
As already said, it is of the essence of every scientific view that it should apprehend the entire play of world-events purely as relation-values. Such a world-conception is bound always to set out from the midst of the play of events, with things already in full swing. Modern monism, with its teaching of primordial life in the form of a primordial cell or some other primordial form, is science only in outward appearance; at the core it is unmitigated superstition, and ought to be regarded as such by every thinking man, for it betrays itself such by its uncritical abuse of ecclesiastical dogma.
After this historical review, given with the utmost possible brevity, we have to inquire:--
What is the reason then for this insufficiency of the _substans_-views, whether it refer to a material or to an ideal _substans_ in things? Why are materialism and idealism alike devoid of any kind of demonstrative ability?
The answer to this is:--
Because both alike are hampered by a contradiction within themselves. This contradiction becomes manifest in the fact that such a world as would be yielded by the concept of _substans_ would be so constituted that in it the fact “concept,” _i.e._ the fact that a world exists as idea, would be bound to remain an eternally insoluble problem.
This necessarily results from the following considerations:--
If there is any _substans_ lying at the foundation of things, it must be a “constant in itself”; as such, however, it must be something possessing no possibility whatever of entering into relations with other things, in any kind of way. If it cannot do this, neither can it become perceptible to sense. If it does not become perceptible to sense, it cannot become a content of consciousness.
Here it may be said: “But it is not _substans_ itself, but its expressions, _i.e._ things, in so far as they are properties, functions, that enter into relations, whether with other things or with the organs of sense of living beings.” But from this we could never get anything else but a summation of disconnected sense-impressions. The thread, so to speak, needed to string the sense-impressions together into a complete, coherent, mental representation would be missing. Everything, so far as it exists for me as a concept, would have to be the expression precisely of a _substans_ lying at its foundation. But to possess a conscious mental representation of this as an unconditioned constant is a contradiction in itself. Hence the fact that there are concepts, _i.e._ that a world as such exists, _i.e._ that there is a world at all, is a direct contradiction of the idea of a _substans_ in virtue of which things are supposed to have existence. With the admission of this idea, every possibility of understanding how such a thing as a content of consciousness ever could come to be, is wholly excluded.
In point of fact, all life, within the boundaries of materialism and idealism, exhausts itself in fruitless attempts to furnish more or less ingenious explanations to account for the connection between the physical and the psychical. Hence the perpetual game of see-saw between both, and the utter inadequacy of either to the genuine thinker, however much ability may be displayed within the limits of the position chosen. All becomes valueless, because the outcome of a presupposition that is a standing contradiction of itself.
And now, how stands it here with the view of the world from which _substans_ is absent?
As already said: Where the idea of _substans_ is torn out of the play of world-events, nothing remains but a world of pure relation-values wherein the one thing constant is the constancy of the relations.
Now, every relation is precisely the inconstant, the unstable, in itself. The heat that springs up with the friction of two objects may--nay, _must_ be looked upon as a relation-value springing up anew with each new moment. Every moment may be represented as consisting of an infinite number of fractions of a moment; in short, it is the unstable in itself.
If now one apprehends the whole play of world-events as relation-values, thereby not only do the phenomena resulting from the play of things upon one another, but also the things themselves, become simple relation-values, and so also examples of the unstable in itself.
Into anything by nature an unstable, connection can only enter through me, the beholder, introducing it in my comprehension of the same. Here the binding thread is lacking in things themselves; with the idea “pure relation-values” one has pulled it out oneself, as is proven by modern positivism itself, even if unwittingly, when it seeks to replace the old succession of cause and effect by the timeless function-concept of mathematics--a thing possible only where the actual cohesion is absent.[35]
With this, however, one stands in a position of contradiction to oneself, _i.e._ to actuality. For if the whole play of world-events, without any exception, is only a relation-value, then I myself am a relation-value also. But if that were so, “memory” would be impossible. In “memory” I _experience_ the cohesion of myself, and through myself prove to myself that I am not a mere relation-value. As such--as Hering rightly remarks in his lecture _Das Gedächtnis_--our consciousness would consist of just as many splinters as one could count moments; which is simply an analytical mode of expression for the fact that there would be no consciousness at all. This in turn would mean that there could be no world _as such_, as our mental representation. And this in its turn would mean that there could be no world at all. For it is absurd to speak of a world where there is no consciousness in which it is represented as such. Without consciousness, however it might run its course, experience would know nothing of itself.
The conception of a world-theory devoid of _substans_ thus also terminates in a contradiction in itself, even as those world-theories which operate with the conception of a _substans_.
As a matter of fact, every scientific view of the world demonstrates its inadequacy in respect of this first question in that it answers it in a manner against all common-sense without itself observing that this is so.
According to the view of science, concepts have their origin in experience and come to be through the discarding, the letting drop, of the unessential. But in order that a concept may come into existence after such a fashion, it is necessary that it exist beforehand as a thing given, in the same way that a statue can only come forth from out the block of marble through the discarding of the unessential, when it is already given ideally in the mind of the artist.[36]
As already remarked, all attempts to frame a view of the world upon purely scientific lines, to comprehend the play of world-events as simple relation-values, present themselves in a twofold form. Making physics its point of departure and from thence working its way forward, one view endeavours to prove the law of the conservation of energy valid also for non-reversible processes; this is the world-theory of energetics. The other view follows the results of criticism; this is modern positivism.
The entire value of the world-theory of energetics is distinguished by the following consideration:--
Its axis, its thorough bass--so to speak--is the law of the conservation of energy; once this gives way, no energical world-theory is possible.
As, however, has been explained in another place, nowhere in actuality do conditions obtain corresponding to this law. Its existence merely as a possibility demands an artificial premiss--a completely closed system; but this exists only as an ideal ultimate concept (_Grenzbegriff_)--nowhere in actuality.
If it is desired to make use of the law of the conservation of energy with a view to erecting a world-theory thereupon, one must set up the entire universe hypothetically as a closed system in itself. The logical consequences that necessarily follow from this supposition are detailed at the close of Essay VI.
The purely ideal nature of the point of view occupied by science in this whole picture of the world is at once evident from the simple fact that, in order to maintain the constancy of the sum of energy in the universe, she here finds herself in the predicament of still having to “handle” as energy heat that no longer permits of being transformed into mechanical work--that is, heat that exists only as an empty concept.
At this stage I wish once more to insist that this entire world-theory does not at all operate with actual energies, but only with the _expression_ of actual energies, with their _reaction_ as presented in _work done_. It assumes work and energy to be synonymous; which is about the same as if one assumed shadow and light to be synonymous. As shadow attests nothing save that light is present, but attests this of necessity, so work attests nothing save that energy is present. Ostwald in his _Naturphilosophie_, after expressly assuming work and energy to be alike, proceeds thus:--
“With the exception of energy, all the other concepts whose importance comes second to that of the law of the conservation of energy, find their application only within a limited field of natural phenomena. Energy alone finds itself again, without exception, in all natural phenomena; that is to say, all natural phenomena permit of being ranged under the concept of energy.” Further on he says: “All that we know of the external world we can represent in the form of propositions concerning actually-existing energies; hence the concept of energy proves itself in every way the most universal that science has yet framed. It comprehends not only the problem of substance, but also that of causality.”
Taken literally, word for word, all this is quite correct, and yet as a whole is founded in a total misunderstanding of actuality. That all natural phenomena should admit of being ranged under the concept of energy, _i.e._ of _work done_, is due solely to the fact that _everywhere actual energies_ are in activity; of these energies, however, we know nothing, absolutely nothing; and their universal presence is proven solely by the universal presence of work. And that work is only the reaction of actual energies is made evident by the fact that the one single _actual_ energy we can get at--consciousness--is the one single value in the universe which never under any circumstances admits of being “read” as work.
When further on in the same volume it is said:--
“As regards the inverse endeavour to comprehend energies apart from matter, for long one dared not attempt such a thing, albeit it was soon perceived that as a matter of fact all we ever learn about the world consists solely of a knowledge of its energical relations.... We will, therefore, venture the attempt to build up a view of the world from which the concept of matter will be absent, a view composed exclusively of energical materials (_i.e._ of the fact _work_),” this has about as much meaning as if some one should say, “I will endeavour, out of shadows and their innumerable modifications alone, to furnish a complete theory of light.” Here we have to do simply with the occurrence designated in another place as the “inversion of positions.” From an extreme materialistic position one leaps at a bound into an equally extreme energical position--each position as purely dialectical as the other. If only one held by _actuality_, one would of oneself repudiate as a profitless mental diversion the very _attempt_ to erect a world-theory upon such premisses. On such one may build up physical systems, achieve technical successes, measure, compute in advance--in fine, carry on scientific studies; but one thing one can never do--out of them build up a view of the world. For a view of the world in which consciousness excludes itself from that which is to be comprehended, has precisely as much value as a numerator without a denominator.
The law of the conservation of energy is purely a reading of the physical facts, _i.e._ of the play of world-events in so far as it manifests itself in the form of reversible processes--thus, as re-actual; and as such is also recognized by physicists of intelligence.[37]
At this point, however, the biologist enters and plays the part of the countryman at the theatre by taking the picture for the reality itself. He argues with that logical acuteness such as is only possible where no actuality stands in its way: “If the law of the conservation of energy is really a universal law, the life of the brain must be just as much subject to it as the reversible processes that are not dependent on time.” Thus, Hering says in his lecture on “Memory” already alluded to: “(The facts of mind, consciousness, and so forth) cannot make the human body to be anything else but that which it is--a complex of matter subject to laws not to be turned aside by anything,--laws followed by the material of the stone, by the substance of the plant.”
With this, however, the biologist is put in a difficult position. He is all unaware that the reversible processes are “subject” to the law of the conservation of energy, _i.e._ may be read by it, only because it is possible here to be satisfied with reactions, only because here one does not need to know anything about the energies themselves, because here there is no “_I_”-sayer who might raise objections to such a mode of apprehending things. The greatness, the exactitude of physics consist precisely in this, that she confines herself strictly to the realm of reactions. In the life of the brain, so far as directly manifested--as consciousness--there are no reactions. The fact “consciousness” in others is not accessible to me; and as for myself, here action and reaction always merge into one another, though I go to work with never so elaborate psycho-physiological precautions.
Hence the necessity of ever and again laying out fresh frontier domains, such as bio-chemistry, bio-kinetics, and so forth and so on, so as to be able to say with Lady Macbeth, “We are yet young in deeds!” Thus, patience! Let us but once get these new courses drawn up and then--how the results will come flowing in!