Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge

by Alexander Philip

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.