The Monist, Vol. 3, 1892-1893 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 3, 1892-1893 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
Thus we see that the idealist has no need to dread a mechanical theory
of life. On the contrary, such a theory, fully developed, is bound to
call in a tychistic idealism as its indispensable adjunct. Wherever
chance-spontaneity is found, there, in the same proportion, feeling
exists. In fact, chance is but the outward aspect of that which within
itself is feeling. I long ago showed that real existence, or thing-ness,
consists in regularities. So, that primeval chaos in which there was
no regularity was mere nothing, from a physical aspect. Yet it was not
a blank zero; for there was an intensity of consciousness there in
comparison with which all that we ever feel is but as the struggling of a
molecule or two to throw off a little of the force of law to an endless
and innumerable diversity of chance utterly unlimited.
But after some atoms of the protoplasm have thus become partially
emancipated from law, what happens next to them? To understand this, we
have to remember that no mental tendency is so easily strengthened by the
action of habit as is the tendency to take habits. Now, in the higher
kinds of protoplasm, especially, the atoms in question have not only long
belonged to one molecule or another of the particular mass of slime of
which they are parts; but before that, they were constituents of food of
a protoplasmic constitution. During all this time, they have been liable
to lose habits and to recover them again; so that now, when the stimulus
is removed, and the foregone habits tend to reassert themselves, they do
so in the case of such atoms with great promptness. Indeed, the return is
so prompt that there is nothing but the feeling to show conclusively that
the bonds of law have ever been relaxed.
In short, diversification is the vestige of chance-spontaneity; and
wherever diversity is increasing, there chance must be operative. On the
other hand, wherever uniformity is increasing, habit must be operative.
But wherever actions take place under an established uniformity, there
so much feeling as there may be takes the mode of a sense of reaction.
That is the manner in which I am led to define the relation between the
fundamental elements of consciousness and their physical equivalents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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