< A Philosophy of Materialisation (continued from page 11-339) >
counterpart in work wholly cut off from the system, and which thus supplies the true physiological criterion of externality.
The return to original configuration after work is not effected by the reversal of the acting forces which brought the changes about, but by forces which are such in virtue of the directions impressed on them in the process of organisation. That which exhibited itself kinetically is directly restored as potential energy in food and, with slight expense of preparation, worked up into the organism to assist in continuing, as an open process in time with termini at birth and death, that series of changes which in the inanimate world are either rhythmical or indefinitely suspended by occasional interference.
It is thus shown that an animal body is a conservative system in the ordinary sense of the word, that is to say a conservative system of matter in Space, only on the ground that it has already shown itself to be conservative in Time. Its own internal forces antagonistic to distortion or disruption, its vital cohesion, its molecular forces in fact, are as necessary to the manifestation of the energies introduced from without, as are the resistance of the boiler plates, the strength and the integrity of the safety valves, to the exhibition of the energy of combustion through the intervention of the pressure of steam, and so far the tissues and organs of the body form parts of conservative systems in the ordinary sense of the word: but on the whole, the living animal is conservative in space and time conjointly, in space in the present, through work done in the past and potential energy built into the system; in time in the knowledge and habits acquired in the past, the possession of the present as a theatre of effort, and m the future on the assumption that waste can be supplied, that there will occur no breach of continuity, for we must always agree on the assumption of uniformity.
I need hardly say that the introduction of the idea of time into the notion of a conservative animal system, does not involve the necessity for considering periodic replenishment of the animal’s wants through the guidance of desires and instincts.
What is really implied, is, that the blood is a practically constant source from which material is drawn to replace that which has been worked off or wasted off without any useful resultant. The blood is thus the immediate time factor introduced, being always ready with its supply of potential energy as occasion may require. If molecular processes result in a certain expenditure with break-down of tissue, the blood is constantly making good such expenditure and loss in molecular processes equally complex.
The general idea is, that we must put the vital processes before us as the so-called molecular processes on a large scale, since we can never get inside any matter other than our own bodies, to know in a connected series of conceptions what goes on there. Action and re-action are equal, to be sure, here as well as elsewhere, so when I push the wall, the wall pushes me: now, while we are both pushing, I know pretty generally what goes on during my own sustained effort, but I don’t know what goes on in the wall, as a wall, nor am I likely to know. Cohesion, molecular forces, &c., are nice words but what do they give me? When I try to pull the keeper from an electro-magnet I am getting nearer to an answer; there is a change going on which defeats my changes, but still the mystery of matter, if wholly cut off from the observer, remains.
I feel hopeless of effecting anything like a decently satisfactory reduction of the difficulties offered by mediumship, where the external world is influenced, if I do not make vital activities the type of all change in the universe of the senses, and therefore I adopt that method.
The criterion of reversibility thus resolves itself in the case of a living animal machine into the test of its ability to go on acting as before, a sum of minute internal rhythmic processes connected with nutrition, replacing the actual dynamic reversal of an inanimate system: for such work as is done by an animal, being always real and positive, in the sense that it cannot be undone, is not to be regarded as a source of supply upon which the system can draw again, even though it may still represent a high class of potential energy, as, for instance, a weight lifted to a height. As it stands, it is as useless for purposes of nutrition as a sack of coals before it is exchanged for loaves of bread, and for all the conserved energy to be got from it by the work-doing animal, it might as well be a picture of a loaf. The rhythm of a Carnot’s engine may be kept up by taking back the work already done, but if so, nothing else is done during its cycle of operations, so that it also, for all practical purposes, may be regarded as a picture, while it perfectly represents the principle of reversibility.
This shadowy engine does no real work, if we are to understand by the word “work” a something essentially involving the idea of space, outness and otherness, for mere logical continuity in time is not the essence of our notion of Life, (or, if so, the sooner it is corrected the better), the true import of which is the doing of something while time is passing: it therefore serves to show us how rhythmic reversibility, involving merely the idea of time continuity, enters only as a single factor into the general notion of the vital process, while at the same time it affords us an easy stepping stone to the physical illustration of the truth that life without action, in an external world, is a meaningless abstraction.
There are no Carnot engines in the visible world, and if there were they would be useless, except they were of such a size as would require a modification of our powers, so that we might be able to apply them to the doing of work of too minute and delicate a character for our present capacities to compass, that is as we have a conscious knowledge of them—a very important reservation.
The engine that we use to illustrate the living animal must be a work-doing engine; but we may suppose that the wants, wishes and adjustments of the living engine, are ministered to by trains of work-doing Carnot engines of any convenient size, in any required groupings, and with either direct or reverse stroke, as these adjustments may demand. Working between a source of high class energy, and a condenser which engulfs but does not annihilate the energy removed or escaping from the system, which does not appear in the form of work, we can suppose any action performed with expenditure of the equivalent of that which is being conveyed into the system by a train of engines acting in the opposite direction. In fact, we can typically represent the two great processes of expenditure and supply, or waste and repair, by trains of such engines variously adjusted as to temperature, limits, &c., but all subject to the condition that they are reversible, therefore as perfect as can be conceived, and that they do their work in time, subject to laws of adjustment which we otherwise know as physiological principles.
The innumerable events of these two processes, in the great living engine doing work external to itself, can, when separately regarded, be pictured to the mind as two streams running in opposite directions at the same average rate. (I will show them afterwards combined in an unique manner.)
This view of the physical nature of life enables us to grasp the fact that even life itself on its physical side, is an exemplification of the law of action and reaction, but at the same time it enables us, from the subjective standpoint for which the world exists in terms of feeling alone, to claim the reaction as arising, not from the inertia of the matter which the materialist kicks along the street, and which the idealist says is only an <... continues on page 11-341 >