Part 13 (1/2)

Atoms and Fixed Laws

When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.

No objection can lie to our supposing potential or elementary volition and consciousness to exist in atoms, on the score that their action would be less regular or uniform if they had free will than if they had not. By giving them free will we do no more than those who make them bound to obey fixed laws. They will be as certain to use their freedom of will only in particular ways as to be driven into those ways by obedience to fixed laws.

The little element of individual caprice (supposing we start with free will), or (supposing we start with necessity) the little element of stiffneckedness, both of which elements we find everywhere in nature, these are the things that prevent even the most reliable things from being absolutely reliable. It is they that form the point of contact between this universe and something else quite different in which none of those fundamental ideas obtain without which we cannot think at all. So we say that nitrous acid is more reliable than nitric for etching.

Atoms have a mind as much smaller and less complex than ours as their bodies are smaller and less complex.

Complex mind involves complex matter and vice versa. On the whole I think it would be most convenient to endow all atoms with a something of consciousness and volition, and to hold them to be pro tanto, living. We must suppose them able to remember and forget, i.e. to retain certain vibrations that have been once established--gradually to lose them and to receive others instead. We must suppose some more intelligent, versatile and of greater a.s.sociative power than others.

Thinking

All thinking is of disturbance, dynamical, a state of unrest tending towards equilibrium. It is all a mode of cla.s.sifying and of criticising with a view of knowing whether it gives us, or is likely to give us, pleasure or no.

Equilibrium

In the highest consciousness there is still unconsciousness, in the lowest unconsciousness there is still consciousness. If there is no consciousness there is no thing, or nothing. To understand perfectly would be to cease to understand at all.

It is in the essence of heaven that we are not to be thwarted or irritated, this involves absolute equilibrium and absolute equilibrium involves absolute unconsciousness. Christ is equilibrium--the not wanting anything, either more or less. Death also is equilibrium. But Christ is a more living kind of death than death is.

VI--MIND AND MATTER

Motion

We cannot define either motion or matter, but we have certain rough and ready ideas concerning them which, right or wrong, we must make the best of without more words, for the chances are ten to one that attempted definition will fuzz more than it will clear.

Roughly, matter and motion are functions one of another, as are mind and matter; they are essentially concomitant with one another, and neither can vary but the other varies also. You cannot have a thing ”matter” by itself which shall have no motion in it, nor yet a thing ”motion” by itself which shall exist apart from matter; you must have both or neither. You can have matter moving much, or little, and in all conceivable ways; but you cannot have matter without any motion more than you can have motion without any matter that is moving.

Its states, its behaviour under varying circ.u.mstances, that is to say the characteristics of its motions, are all that we can cognise in respect of matter. We recognise certain varying states or conditions of matter and give one state one name, and another another, as though it were a man or a dog; but it is the state not the matter that we cognise, just as it is the man's moods and outward semblance that we alone note, while knowing nothing of the man. Of matter in its ultimate essence and apart from motion we know nothing whatever. As far as we are concerned there is no such thing: it has no existence: for de non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio.

It is a mistake, therefore, to speak about an ”eternal unchangeable underlying substance” as I am afraid I did in the last pages of Luck or Cunning? but I am not going to be at the trouble of seeing. For, if the substance is eternal and unknowable and unchangeable, it is tantamount to nothing. Nothing can be nearer non-existence than eternal unknowableness and unchangeableness.

If, on the other hand, the substance changes, then it is not unknowable, or uncognisable, for by cognising its changes we cognise it. Changes are the only things that we can cognise. Besides, we cannot have substance changing without condition changing, and if we could we might as well ignore condition. Does it not seem as though, since the motions or states are all that we cognise, they should be all that we need take account of? Change of condition is change of substance. Then what do we want with substance? Why have two ideas when one will do?

I suppose it has all come about because there are so many tables and chairs and stones that appear not to be moving, and this gave us the idea of a solid substance without any motion in it.

How would it be to start with motion approximately patent, and motion approximately latent (absolute patency and absolute latency being unattainable), and lay down that motion latent as motion becomes patent as substance, or matter of chair-and-table order; and that when patent as motion it is latent as matter and substance?

I am only just recovering from severe influenza and have no doubt I have been writing nonsense.

Matter and Mind