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Evolution. F. B. Jevons
Читать онлайн.Название Evolution
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4064066173449
Автор произведения F. B. Jevons
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
We may be asked, "Granted that the Real is more than a state of our consciousness, what more is it?" and, if no answer is forthcoming, we may be told that after all then, it seems, we know that the Real is, but not what it is. The reply is: So far as the Real is out of consciousness we may not know what it is; as far as it is in, we do. By "being conscious of a thing" we mean knowing what the thing is—not necessarily complete knowledge, but some.
If it be said that, on our own showing, a thing and the knowledge of it are different, and that consequently however great our knowledge may become there always remains, and must always remain, something which we cannot know, because it is ex hypothesi, not knowledge, we must reply that this objection is but a restatement of the inveterate fallacy of idealism—the fallacy that states of consciousness are the only things we can be conscious of; that if we know a thing the thing ceases to be anything but our knowledge of it; that to be conscious of performing an action is proof that no action is really performed, and that the only doing is knowing.
We act, and we know that we act. Reality must be accorded to both or denied to both; it cannot be accorded to one and denied to the other. Indeed, knowledge itself is action, a series of actions. But it is also something more, just as an action of which we are conscious is something more than our consciousness of it.
But we are conscious not only of our own actions, but of the reactions of things on us, and of the interactions of things on one another. We apprehend all three—action, reaction, and interaction—as real; we know not only that they are, as being realities, but also what they are as states of consciousness. As states of consciousness they are successive sensations or perceptions; as more than states of consciousness they are power or force.
The study which science makes of the interactions of things on one another reveals those interactions as conformable to law and happening in such a way that their occurrence can be logically deduced, and even foretold, from their laws. In a word, they happen in a way that can be reasoned out, and they constitute together a logical process. The reality, the power, the activity which is exhibited in this process is exhibited therefore as a rational activity, as reason active; and both the reason and the action are apprehended by us as real, and not as mere states of our consciousness.
If the scientific account of the universe and the theory of evolution, so far as they are true, are not mere exercises of the imagination, but represent events and changes which actually have taken place and are taking place beyond the range of actual observation, it must be because they are logical inferences from real events and real changes which are matters of direct observation. If the observed events have no reality, we have no ground for believing the unobserved or inferred facts to have any. Unless the real events follow a logical sequence, our inferences must be fallacious in proportion as they are logical. We believe the inferred facts to be real because we believe the observed facts to be real; and the observed facts are presented to us and apprehended by us to be not merely our sensations but also realities. On no other ground can we or do we trust science to guide us in life.
Nor do we trust morality on any other ground. So far as we trust the impulse to do right, or base any calculations upon it or draw any inferences from it, we do so because we apprehend it, in the act of apprehension, as both a state of our consciousness and something more. As in the impact of a moving body we apprehend not merely our sensations, but also the presence of a real power, so in the impulse to good we apprehend not only our consciousness thereof, but the presence of a real power, with regard to which we know not only that it is, but to some extent what it is—a power which would have us do good and be good.
If material things are but ideas of ours, so the Right and Good may be. If the latter are mere aspirations and nothing more, the former are mere sensations and nothing more. But if in things we are conscious of a power not ourselves, so are we in our consciousness of the Right and Good: our aspirations are inspirations. We apprehend their reality in exactly the same way as we apprehend the reality of material things—by direct observation. And we have exactly the same evidence—the evidence of immediate consciousness.
"Let no man spoil you with philosophy." The statements that "knowledge is the only reality," "the only Real is the Unknowable," are contradictory not only of each other, but of those facts in the common experience of mankind which afford the only safe foundation for philosophy as well as for science. Both statements logically imply that our only knowledge is of the unreal; and from knowledge of the unreal to the unreality of knowledge is a necessary step. But existence is not merely knowledge: existence is also action. A thing is that which it does, and not merely that which it is known to do. Or rather a thing never does anything: only a person can act. The "action" or "behaviour" of a thing is only a metaphor.
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