#The dignity of mental tools.#
Professor Mach says: "The implement is not of the same dignity or reality as A B C…." It appears to me that these implements (if they are of the right kind) have almost a higher dignity (although not reality) than the material to which they are applied. My respect for tools is very great, for tools are the most important factors, perhaps the decisive factors, in the evolution of man. The usage of tools has matured, nay created the human mind, and words,—scientific and abstract terms and theories not excluded,—are the most important and most sacred tools of all.
Some ideas, it is true, have to be laid aside like tools that are no longer wanted; but there are other ideas which we cannot lay aside, because they have more value than the ideas of a mere working hypothesis. Some ideas are indispensable and will remain indispensable; we shall always have to employ them in order to represent in our mind the connection between certain facts. If we see a train pass into a tunnel and emerge from it at the other end, we will connect in our mind these two sensations by the thought of the train's passage from one end to the other. This idea is not a sensation; it is a noumenon. Shall it therefore be called a mere noumenon, a tool that has to be discarded as soon as we are accustomed to expect a train to emerge from the one end of a tunnel soon after it has disappeared into it at the other end?
#Noumena legitimate, if representing realities.#
There are scientific concepts which, for some reason or other, can never become objects of direct observation; they can never become sensations. Nevertheless we must think them together with certain sensations as indispensable connecting events taking place behind the stage and hidden from our eyes. Our conception of a train hidden from sight in a tunnel, it is true, is a noumenon, but it is a legitimate noumenon, it represents a reality. So also many scientific ideas, although undoubtedly things of thought, are legitimate noumena. If they contain and in so far as they do contain nothing but formulated features of reality or inevitable conclusions from verified and verifiable experiences, these things of thought represent something real, which means that if we were in possession of microscopes of sufficient power, or if we could look behind the veil that hides them from our sight, we should see them, just as we should see the train if the rock through which the tunnel leads were transparent.
III. THE ORIGIN OF FEELING.
Concerning the origin of feeling Professor Mach says: "The question how feeling arises out of the physical element has for me no significance." I agree that we cannot ask how feeling arises out of the physical element. But feeling being a fleeting phenomenon, to propose the problem of the origin of feeling has a significance.
#Physical elements with and without feeling.#
Some physical elements—namely, those of our own body—are indubitably possessed of the subjective phenomena of feeling. And as to certain other physical elements, observable in our fellow creatures, that is in men and animals, no one would think of denying their presence either. But there are physical elements which we regard as bare of all feeling. The wind that blows, and the avalanche that plunges into the valley are not supposed to be feelings. Yet the energy of the wind and the energy of the avalanche may be utilised and ultimately stored up in food. The food may be changed into human energy and then the element of feeling appears as if called forth out of the void. We agree that feeling has not been changed from motion. But if feeling was not motion before, what was it? Feeling cannot be a creation from nothing. Consequently it must in its elements have existed before. Feeling, namely actual feeling, must be regarded as a special mode of action of the elements of feeling. If all that which we can observe in motion, all that which the term motion comprises, constituting the objective changes taking place in nature, contains nothing of feeling or of the elements of feeling, we must yet attach to every motion the presence of this element of feeling.
#Elements of feeling not observable.#