Of course, in ordinary speech, and even in careful scientific description, we are forced, if we would avoid pedantry, to skip backwards and forwards from the kinetic to the metakinetic. We speak of a kinetic cow giving rise to metakinetic fear, and this determining certain kinetic activities. Why we thus interpose a mental link in a physical series has already been explained. The physical cow we know, the physical activities we know, the physical neuroses we scarcely know at all. On the other hand, fear we have ourselves experienced, and know well. Hence we introduce the mental link that we know in place of the physical link of which we are ignorant. And there can be no harm in our doing so when we are working on the practical, and not the philosophical plane. But when we are striving to go deeper, and are employing that gift of analysis which is man's prerogative, in order to proceed to a higher and more complete synthesis,—then we must be careful to keep separate those processes which analysis discloses to be distinct. And I repeat that, on the philosophical plane of thought, we must remember that metakineses are determined by other metakineses, and by them alone.
The reader who has kept his head among these slippery places will at once see that this is and must be so; for, as we have already seen ([p. 474]), all phenomena are states of consciousness, whatever else they may also be. The cow, as a phenomenon, is a construct, a product of mental activity, and woven out of states of consciousness. For the pure idealist she is this and nothing more. But for us she is a real external entity, manifested through phenomenal kineses. Hence in ordinary speech we separate the kinetic cow from its metakinetic symbols in consciousness (the convex from the concave aspect), and call the former the cow itself, and the latter our idea of the cow. But, as before maintained, my idea of an object is for me the object. And this is now justified by our deeper analysis.
The physiologist, dealing with organic phenomena in terms of motion (kinesis), proclaims that the physical series is complete, that there is no necessity for the introduction of feeling which is at best but a by-product. The idealist, dealing with the processes of thought and emotion in terms of consciousness, proclaims that his series is complete—an external material universe is an unnecessary encumbrance. Each proclaims a half-truth; each sees that half of the truth which alone is visible from his special standpoint. Monism combines the two (and is, of course, scouted by both). It sees not only that the one series does not in any case interfere with the other, but that the conception of such an interference involves an impossibility and incongruity. As soon could one speak of the convexities of one side of a curved surface interfering with the corresponding concavities of the other side, as of the metakinetic series interfering with the kinetic series, which is its other aspect. But if the one cannot interfere with the other, neither can the one exist without the other. To apply the same analogy, as well might one speak of the convexities of a curved surface existing without the concavities of its other side, as of the kinetic phenomena of organic life as being conceivably the same in the absence of conscious intelligence.
Remembering, then, that just as the environment of kinetic phenomena is itself kinetic, with which consciousness can in no wise interfere, so is the environment of metakinetic phenomena, perception, thought, and emotion, itself metakinetic. Let us now proceed to consider some of the implications.
We have already seen that, in what we may regard as the earlier phases of organic and mental life, the series between stimulus and activity is a simple one, which may be kinetically represented thus—
Stimulus → neural processes → motor-activities;
but that when inhibition is developed, there arises an alternative, thus—
| Stimulus→ | motor-activities. | |
 | ||
 | ||
| inhibition thereof. |
And we further saw that, as a result of this inhibition, the entering stimuli, instead of, as it were, rapidly running out of the organism in motor-activities, set up a more and more complex series of diffused and reverberating neural processes in the brain or other central ganglia.
From the metakinetic view-point these diffused and reverberating neural processes in the brain culminate in consciousness as thought, æsthetic emotion, and the higher conceptual mental activities. Deeply as these influence conduct, they are, to a large extent, independent of conduct. A man's thoughts and æsthetic yearnings may be of the truest and purest; but in the moment of temptation and action, when stimuli crowding in run through rapidly to action, he falls away. His conduct belies his ideals. Nevertheless, the ideals were there, but too far away in the region of thought and abstract æsthetics to be operative in action.