When,
however, Galileo, Descartes, and others found
it best for philosophic purposes to class sound,
heat, and light along with pain and pleasure
as purely mental phenomena, they could do so
with impunity.(1)
Even the primary qualities are undergoing
the same fate. Hardness and softness are effects
on us of atomic interactions, and the
atoms themselves are neither hard nor soft,
nor solid nor liquid. Size and shape are deemed
---
1 [Cf. Descartes: _Meditation_ II; _Principles_of_Philosophy_,
part I, XLVIII.]
148
subjective by Kantians; time itself is subjective
according to many philosophers;(1) and
even the activity and causal efficacy which
lingered in physics long after secondary qualities
were banished are now treated as illusory
projections outwards of phenomena of our
own consciousness. There are no activities or
effects in nature, for the most intellectual
contemporary school of physical speculation.
Nature exhibits only _changes_, which habitually
coincide with one another so that their habits
are describable in simple 'laws.'(2)
There is no original spirituality or materiality
of being, intuitively discerned, then; but
only a translocation of experiences from one
world to another; a grouping of them with
one set or another of associates for definitely
practical or intellectual ends.
Pages:
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139