Philosophy and Specific Problems [pp. 208-232]

PHILOSOPHY AND ITS SPECIFIC PROBLEMS.. 229
.could be conceived as possessing any other than sensible or
phenomenal reality, could exert no force. The forces possessed
by a material or sensible reality must themselves be sensible.
But to sense, and consequently to pure physical science (as we
have seen above), no forces are known or knowable, but only
motions, or signs of motions. That is, a sensible force is a contradiction in terms. Accordingly, as matter of historic fact,
philosophic materialism has no scientific standing in the history
of speculation. Its basis has always been recognized as purely
dogmatic. But this is not to say that within the sphere of physical analysis and description the materialistic conception has
-not its full symbolic significance and justification.
The subject of consciousness, entering into and actively
maintaining relations which are so different from mechanical or
sensible relations, is called a spirit. It knows itself as a force
whose activity is its life, and whose life is "energy of intelligence." Its object, by the terms of the science of knowledge,
must be, and is, in varying potencies and in diverse forms of
manifestation, of like kind. The world is indeed a manifesta'tion of "force" (as we are told), and force is indeed "inscrutable" to sense. But to intelligence, to the living experience of
man, force is the consciously self-revealing reality of spirit. If,
,as Plato finds at one stage of his inquiries, "being is simply
power;" if, consequently, there is no being where there is no
doing, so that the sphere of the former is precisely coextensive
with the sphere of the latter, then we are entitled to say that
there is neither being, nor power, nor doing, where there is no
present reality of spirit. But there is no such reality where
there is no life. The universe of reality, therefore, whether
subjective or objective, is for philosophy a universe of spiritual
life. This is the reality, of which the " phenomena" of physical
science, viz. configuration and motion, are in sensible consciousness the manifestation. It is the same reality which,
through or in alliance with the mechanism of sensible phenomena, is more clearly manifested according to its true nature, as
energy of spirit in the life of nature, and of man in society, art,
Sand religion.
The "ideal" relation which the science of knowledge found
existing between subject and object was, and is, not abstract,