Recent scientific writings contain enough to show us that men of science are already beginning to recognise not only the inconsistency of the theory of two real things, but the dominating significance of the conception of Energy, and are gradually coming to claim for the conception of Matter little more than recognition as the vehicle of energetic transmutation. Let us then for the moment accept the position that Science—ridding itself of redundant theory—postulates Energy as the real thing-in-itself, in terms of which it frames its statement of physical phenomena, and let us examine briefly the effects which the acceptance of this new postulate is likely to have on philosophic speculation.
All my Presentment, all the content of my sense-experience, according to this theory, I attribute to a multifarious continuous series of transmutations constantly proceeding in some portion of the system of Energy which constitutes the real substratum of phenomena. I study, measure, and classify the different species of these transmutations; I associate particular sensations and classes of sensations with particular transmutations, and I thence infer the existence in posse or in esse of more or less Energy in some particular form transmuting itself according to some one or other definite physical law. I infer also the existence of various supplies of potential Energy constantly available, and of other intelligent agents like myself.
I associate every such intelligent agent with a particular series or group of sense-experiences, and further I assume that the world at his Presentment, consists for him in a similar series of transmutations continuously going on in that portion of the energetic system which I believe in a similar way to constitute such person's bodily organism. Thus by the same process of reasoning by which I am led to believe that my own Presentment consists in the energetic transmutations proceeding in my organism, I explain the universality of the experience of all intelligent agents. In my own case, by that union of consciousness with physical energy which accompanies the manifestation of life, I am immediately related with that portion of the energetic system which is the real substratum of my organism, and am made conscious of the series of transmutations occurring at that particular point in it which is represented by my sensory system. In the case of others, from certain of the transmutations occurring in my Presentment, I am led to infer the existence of other similar microcosmic systems in the energetic macrocosm of the physical universe.
This is all very well as a theory, but if all I know is the series of transmutations occurring in the portion of the system of Energy related directly to my intelligence, how did I ever learn to infer from these transmutations the existence of that Energy underlying them, and still more of the whole energetic system extending far beyond my organism? How do I deduce from transmutations proceeding in the portion of the energetic system which constitutes the real substratum of my organism the existence, not only of that substratum itself, but of other portions of the system similarly related to other intelligences, and of the energetic system as a whole? How do I get beyond my Presentment? How pass from Ideality to Existence?
I answer that I never could by any chance or possibility have got beyond it or got any suggestion of the Reality had I been merely related to my Presentment as a passive and percipient subject. In point of fact, however, I am in relation with the energetic system not merely or primarily as an Intelligence percipient of the transmutations proceeding in it at a particular point, but also as a Will initiative to some extent of such transmutations and capable of influencing and directing the physical process. Life necessarily involves a process of energetic transmutation constantly proceeding at that portion of the system of Energy which constitutes my organism, and I am there related as Will with a larger system which embraces the part in which intelligence is developed.
Fundamentally, life manifests itself in all grades of the zoologic hierarchy as a union of Volition (or what appears in action as Volition) with some particular point in the universe of physical Energy, the union constituting what we call a living organism.
Despite its profound importance to us personally and to our race, we should not forget that, objectively considered, the brain in man and the higher animals is merely a special organ highly developed by use, as the trunk is in the elephant, the middle phalanx in the horse, or wings in the bird. Intelligence is hardly to any extent a necessity of the vital union of the Will with the energetic system. It is not at all developed in the vegetal kingdom, hardly at all in some branches of the animal, and there may conceivably be an infinite number of other "kingdoms" in which it may be either undeveloped, or very differently developed, or superseded by some other manifestation by us unimaginable. Its development indeed seems to be concurrent with the development of a locomotive faculty—a striking confirmation of the theory that it is in our activity that we derive the suggestions which call forth the exercise of the Understanding and transform sensation into perception.
It is only with a comparative fraction of the organism that I am related as a passively percipient intelligence. I am directly or indirectly related as Will, as an originative cause of activity, with a larger portion of my organism, many parts of which are quite distinct from the cognitive portion. Now it is from my relation as Will with Energy other than and beyond the energetic transmutations which constitute my Presentment that I discover the energetic system of Nature, as a real thing—beyond, underlying, and by its transmutations constitutive of my Presentment. Many of the transmutations which occur in my Presentment I recognise as attributable to my own volitional activity operating upon my energetic organism, and in my own activity there is thus suggested to me a source of phenomena lying beyond these phenomena themselves. A transmutation initiated in my brain is a pure idea. The key which suggests to me the real world is the occurrence of transmutations ascribable to my activity operating beyond the sphere which constitutes my Presentment.
It is in this way that I originally discover the real energetic substratum to the phenomenal world of my Presentment. I learn from the transmutations to infer the agency and operation of the underlying energy, and thus gradually construct my whole systematic conception of the real world in which I live and move and have my being.
This view of my activity and of the consequences of my relation as Will to the energetic system represented by my organism, including the portion thereof related to my intelligence, supplies us therefore with a key to the inevitable reference of thoughts to things.