The Faith of a Realist (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1890 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VII. De Anima. As we have already seen, all phenomena imply noumena. Hence, a phenomenal world implies a noumenal world, and phenomenal energy and matter imply noumenal energy and matter. The latter are the cause of the former. They are the noumenal cause of every phenomenal thing, and, amongst other phenomenal things, are the noumenal cause of the phenomena of human consciousness. Man, like the world without him, and as a part of nature, is a thing of energy and matter. In his soul we discern the energy and in his body the matter which in their union and co-operation make him what he is. All phenomena of matter are phenomena also of energy, and all phenomena of energy are phenomena also of matter. Indeed, in strictness, all phenomena whatever are, at one and the same time, phenomena of both, although we usually speak of this phenomenon as a phenomenon of matter, and of that as a phenomenon of energy, according as the matter or the energy which contributes to produce it is the more strikingly apparent to our minds. Thus we should probably call a rock, a cannon-ball, or a block of wood, a phenomenon of matter, and an earthquake, an avalanche, or a rushing cataract, a phenomenon of energy or force. They are, however, all of them equally phenomena of both. And it is with vital and mental as with all other phenomena: they are phenomena of matter quite as much as phenomena of energy. We call them, perhaps, by preference, phenomena of energy, or it may be that we call them, in more popular phraseology, phenomena of soul, perceiving, as we cannot help doing, the existence of something other than matter as concerned in their production. There can be no doubt, however, that they are never phenomena of energy alone, but invariably of energy and matter in conj...