When we say that we perceive an object, the mental process (perception) is the metakinetic equivalent of certain kinetic changes among the brain-molecules. The object, as an object (as a phenomenon or appearance), is there generated. As before stated, I assume the existence of a noumenal system of which the noumenal existence, symbolized as object, is a part. But what we term the object is a certain phase of metakinesis accompanying certain kinetic nerve-processes in the brain. In other words, phenomena are states of consciousness, and cannot, for the percipient, be anything else.
"It comes to this, then," an idealist will interpose: "states of consciousness are metakinetic; phenomena are states of consciousness; therefore phenomena are metakinetic. Your kinesis vanishes, and you are one with us, a pure idealist."
Before showing wherein I am not a pure idealist, let me state why I am not. For the pure idealist, phenomena being states of consciousness, and nothing more, the world around resolves itself into an individual dream. Were I to hold this view, this pen which I hold, this table at which I write, the spreading trees outside my window, my little sons whose merry voices I can hear in the garden, my very body and limbs, all are merely states of my own consciousness. This I am not prepared to accept. Do what I will, I cannot believe that such an interpretation of the facts is true.
For this reason I make my first assumption that there is a noumenal system of things in themselves, of which all phenomena, whether kinetic or metakinetic, are manifestations. I differ from the pure idealist in that I believe that phenomena, besides being states of consciousness, have another, namely, a kinetic, aspect. What are for me states of consciousness are for you neural processes in my brain. These are, again, for you states of consciousness; but still for some one else they are kinetic processes. And an ordinary extraneous object, like this table, is the phenomenal aspect to me of a noumenal existence; and since that noumenal existence appears to you also in like phenomenal guise, the table is an object for you as well as for me, and not only for us, but for all sentient beings similarly constituted. The world we live in is a world of phenomena; and it has a phenomenal reality every whit as valid as the noumenal reality which underlies it. And that phenomenal reality has two aspects—an inner aspect as metakinesis, and an outer aspect as kinesis.
I must not here further develop the manner in which the hypothesis of monism presents itself to my mind. I will only, before passing on to consider mental or metakinetic evolution, draw passing attention to two matters. We have seen that Professor Hering and Mr. Samuel Butler have suggested "organic memory" as a conception useful for the comprehension of embryonic reconstruction in development and other such matters (see [p. 62]). On the hypothesis of monism, this may be regarded as a kinetic manifestation of that which in memory rises to the metakinetic level of consciousness.
The other matter is of far wider import. Monism affords a consistent and comprehensible theory of the ego, or conscious self—that which endures amid the flux and reflux of our conscious states. The ego, or self, is that metakinetic unity which answers to, or is the inner aspect of, the kinetic unity of the organism.[KG] Only here and there, in fleeting and changing series, does the metakinesis rise to the level of consciousness. But the metakinetic unity is as completely one, indivisible, and enduring, as is the physical organism which is its kinetic counterpart. No one questions that there is an enduring organism of which certain visible activities are occasional manifestations; no one who has adequately grasped the teachings of monism can question that the enduring ego, of which certain states of consciousness are occasional manifestations, is the metakinetic equivalent of the organic kinesis. This solution of a problem which baffles alike materialists and idealists is, as it seems to me, as satisfactory as it is simple.
And now let us pass on to consider the question of mental or metakinetic evolution. What, on the principles above laid down, can we be said to know or have learnt about it?
The inevitable isolation of the individual mind has long been recognized. "Such is the nature of spirit, or that which acts," says Bishop Berkeley, "that it cannot be itself perceived, but only by the effects that it produceth." "Thinking things, as such," writes Kant, "can never occur in the outward phenomena; we can have no outward perception of their thoughts, consciousness, desires; for all this is the domain of the inward sense." How comes it, then, that there is nothing of which, practically speaking, we are more firmly convinced than that our neighbours have each a consciousness more or less similar to our own? Certain it is that no one can come into sensible contact with his brother's personality and essential spirit. My brother's soul can never stand to me in the relation of object. Subject he never can be to any but himself. What, then, is he—his metakinetic self, not his kinetic material body—to me? In Clifford's convenient phrase, he is an eject. And what is an eject? An eject is a more or less modified image of myself, that I see mirrored, as in a glass darkly, in the human-folk around me. Into every human brother I breathe the spirit of this eject, and he becomes henceforth to me a living soul. Or, if this mode of presentation does not meet with approval, I will say that an eject is that metakinetic unity I infer as identically associated with the organic and kinetic unity of my brother's living body. And I base the close metakinetic correspondence that I infer on the close kinetic correspondence that I observe. But since the only form or kind of metakinesis that I know is that of human self-conscious personality, it is certain that the metakinetic eject is an image of myself; it is and must be, in a word, anthropomorphic.
Too much stress can scarcely, I think, be laid on the human, nay, even the individual, nature of the eject. All other-mind I am bound to think of in terms of my own mind. The men and women I see around me are like curved mirrors, in which I see an altered reflection of my own mental features. By certain signs I may be able to infer in this or that human mirror graces or imperfections that I lack. But throughout my survey of human nature, every estimate of intellectual or moral elevation or degradation that I form must ever be measured in terms of my own subjective base-line. My conception of humanity must always be, not only anthropomorphic, but idiomorphic.
Once more, let it be remembered that the metakinesis that rises to the level of consciousness is that which forms the inner aspect of the neural kinesis of my brain or yours. For each of us, then, that metakinesis is the only possible metakinesis which we can know as such and at first-hand. And for the pure idealist it is the only metakinesis which he can know at all. Not so with us. We have assumed a noumenal system of "things in themselves," of which all phenomena, whether kinetic or metakinetic, are manifestations. We have assumed that kinesis cannot emerge into the light of being without casting its inseparable metakinetic shadow. We have assumed that when the kinetic manifestations assume the integrated and co-ordinated complexity of nerve-processes in certain ganglia of the human brain, the metakinetic manifestations assume the integrated and co-ordinated complexity of human consciousness. Human physiology is teaching us more clearly every day that all human activities are, physically speaking, the outcome of neural processes. Such neural processes are in us conscious. Therefore, granting our assumptions, the conclusion that my neighbour is a conscious self, just as I am, is not only legitimate, but (as we see from the daily conduct of men) inevitable. In other words, certain kinetic phenomena have for us inevitable metakinetic implications.