Tertium Organum

ceases 
to be. 
Tomorrow, if it comes, there will be a new sun, just as for us there is a 
new spring 
each year. In order 
to be
the sun cannot wake up; it must 
come 
into being,
be born. An animal (if it could think without losing its 
characteristic psychology) could not believe in the appearance 
today of
the 
same sun that was there 
yesterday.
This is human reasoning.
For an animal a 
new sun
rises every morning, just as for us a 
new morning 
comes every day, a 
new spring
every year. 

---

An animal is incapable of understanding that the sun is one and the same, whether 
today or yesterday -
EXACTLY AS WE PROBABLY CANNOT 
UNDERSTAND THAT THE MORNING IS ONE, AND THE SPRING IS ONE. 
The motion of objects which, for us, is not illusory but real, such as the motion of a 
rotating wheel or a moving carriage and so on, must, for an animal, differ greatly from 
the motion it sees in all objects which are motionless for us - that motion in the guise 
of which it sees the third dimension of bodies. This first motion (i.e. motion which is 
also real for us) must appear to it spontaneous, 
alive. 
And these two kinds of motion will be incommensurable for it. 
An animal will be able to measure an angle or a convex surface, although it will not 
understand its true meaning and will regard it as motion. But it will never be able to 
measure real motion, i.e. motion which is real for us. To do this it is necessary to have 
our conception of time 
and measure all movements in relation to some more constant 
motion, i.e. compare all movements with one. As an animal has no concepts, it will not 
be able to do this. Therefore, movements of objects which are 
real for us
will be 
incapable of measurement, and thus 
incommensurable with
other movements which, 
for it, are real and capable of measurement, but for us are illusory, constituting in 
reality the third dimension of bodies. 
The latter is inevitable. If an animal senses and measures 
as motion 
that which is not 
motion, it is clear that it cannot apply the same measure to that which is and that which 
is not motion. 
But this does not mean that an animal cannot know the character of movements 
proceeding in our world and conform to them. On the contrary, we see that an animal 
orientates perfectly among the movements of objects of our three-dimensional world. 
In this it is helped by instinct, i.e. capacity, evolved through hundreds of centuries of 
selection, of performing expedient actions without consciousness of purpose. And an 
animal discriminates perfectly well between movements happening round it. 
But, distinguishing between two kinds of phenomena -
two kinds of motion -
an 
animal is bound to explain one of them by some inner inexplicable property of objects, 
i.e. it will probably regard that kind of motion as the result of the 
animation of
objects, 
and will regard moving objects 
as alive. 
A kitten plays with a ball or with its own tail because the ball or the tail 
runs away 
from it. 
A bear will fight with a beam until the beam throws him off the tree, because in the 
swinging beam he feels something alive and hostile. 

---

A horse shies from a bush because the bush has suddenly turned round and 
waved a branch. 
In the latter case the bush may not have moved at all - it was the horse that 
was running. But it