Exactly what appears there is what we
_mean_ by working, though we may later come
to learn that working was not exactly _there_.
Sustaining, persevering, striving, paying with
effort as we go, hanging on, and finally achieving
our intention -- this _is_ action, this _is_ effectuation
in the only shape in which, by a pure
experience-philosophy, the whereabouts of it
184
anywhere can be discussed. Here is creation
in its first intention, here is causality at work.(1)
To treat this offhand as the bare illusory surface
of a world whose real causality is an unimaginable
ontological principle hidden in the
cubic deeps, is, for the more empirical way of
thinking, only animism in another shape. You
explain your given fact by your 'principle,' but
the principle itself, when you look clearly at it,
turns out to be nothing but a previous little
spiritual copy of the fact. Away from that one
and only kind of fact your mind, considering
causality, can never get.(2)
---
1 Let me not be told that this contradicts [the first essay], 'Does
Consciousness Exist?' (see especially page 32), in which it was said
that while 'thoughts' and 'things' have the same natures, the natures
work 'energetically' on each other in the things (fire burns, water
wets, etc.
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