To mark the fact that this type of causation is clearly distinguished from the type called mechanical, it will be well to give it a name of its own. If we look for a suitable term, the word 'magical' suggests itself. The fact that this word has gathered all sorts of doubtful associations must not hinder us from adopting it into the terminology of a science which aspires to understand the working of the supersensible in the world of the senses. The falling into disrepute of this word is characteristic of the onlooker-age. The way in which we suggest it should be used is in accord with its true and original meaning, the syllable 'mag' signifying power or might (Sanskrit maha, Greek megas, Latin magnus, English might, much, also master). Henceforth we shall distinguish between 'mechanical' and 'magical' causation, the latter being a characteristic of the majority of happenings in the human, animal and plant organisms.1
*
Our next step in building up a truly dynamic picture of matter must be to try to obtain a direct experience of the condition of matter when it is under the sway of magical causation.
Let us first remember what is the outstanding attribute with which matter responds to mechanical causation. This is known to be inertia. By this term we designate the tendency of physical matter to resist any outwardly impressed change of its existing state of movement. This property is closely linked up with another one, weight. The coincidence of the two has of late become a puzzle to science, and it was Albert Einstein who tried to solve it by establishing his General Theory of Relativity. The need to seek such solutions falls away in a science which extends scientific understanding to conditions of matter in which weight and inertia are no longer dominant characteristics. What becomes of inertia when matter is subject to magical causation can be brought to our immediate experience in the following way. (The reader, even if he is already familiar with this experiment, is again asked to carry it out for himself.)
Take a position close to a smooth wall, so that one arm and hand, which are left hanging down alongside the body, are pressed over their entire length between body and wall. Try now to move the arm upward, pressing it against the wall as if you wanted to shift the latter. Apply all possible effort to this attempt, and maintain the effort for about one minute. Then step away quickly from the wall by more than the length of the arm, while keeping the arm hanging down by the side of the body in a state of complete relaxation. Provided all conditions are properly fulfilled, the arm will be found rising by itself in accordance with the aim of the earlier effort, until it reaches the horizontal. If the arm is then lowered again and left to itself, it will at once rise again, though not quite so high as before. This can be repeated several times until the last vestige of the automatic movement has faded away.
Having thus ascertained by direct experience that there is a state of matter in which inertia is, to say the least, greatly diminished, we find ourselves in need of giving this state (which is present throughout nature wherever material changes are brought into existence magically) a name of its own, as we did with the two types of causation. A word suggests itself which, apart from expressing adequately the peculiar self-mobility which we have just brought to our experience, goes well alongside the word 'inert' by forming a kind of rhyme with it. This is the term 'alert'. With its help we shall henceforth distinguish between matter in the inert and alert conditions. We shall call the latter state 'alertness', and in order to have on the other side a word as similar as possible in outer form to alertness, we suggest replacing the usual term inertia by 'inertness'. Thus we shall speak of matter as showing the attribute of 'inertness', when it is subject to mechanical causation, of 'alertness', when it is subject to magical causation.
Anyone who watches attentively the sensation produced by the rising arm in the above experiment will be duly impressed by the experience of the alertness prevailing in the arm as a result of the will's magical intervention.
*
In our endeavour to find a modern way of overcoming the conception of matter developed and held by science in the age of the onlooker-consciousness, we shall be helped by noticing how this conception first arose historically. Of momentous significance in this respect is the discovery of the gaseous state of matter by the Flemish physician and experimenter, Joh. Baptist van Helmont (1577-1644). The fact that the existence of this state of ponderable matter was quite unknown up to such a relatively recent date has been completely forgotten to-day. Moreover, it is so remote from current notions that anyone who now calls attention to van Helmont's discovery is quite likely to be met with incredulity. As a result, there is no account of the event that puts it in its true setting. In what follows pains are taken to present the facts in the form in which one comes to know them through van Helmont's own account, given in his Ortus Medicinae.
For reasons which need not be described here, van Helmont studied with particular interest the various modifications in which carbon is capable of occurring in nature - among them carbon's combustion product, carbon dioxide. It was his observations of carbon dioxide which made him aware of a condition of matter whose properties caused him the greatest surprise. For he found it to be, at the same time, 'much finer than vapour and much denser than air'. It appeared to him as a complete 'paradox', because it seemed to unite in itself two contradictory qualities, one appertaining to the realm of 'uncreated things', the other to the realm of 'created things'. Unable to rank it with either 'vapour' or 'air' (we shall see presently what these terms meant in van Helmont's terminology), he found himself in need of a special word to distinguish this new state from the other known states, both below and above it. Since he could not expect any existing language to possess a suitable word, he felt he must create one. He therefore took, and changed slightly, a word signifying a particular cosmic condition which seemed to be imaged in the new condition he had just discovered. The word was CHAOS. By shortening it a little, he derived from it the new word GAS. His own words explaining his choice are: 'Halitum ilium GAS vocavi non longe a Chaos veterum secretum.' ('I have called this mist Gas, owing to its resemblance to the Chaos of the ancients.')2