Tertium Organum

by himself,
just as a 

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stone cannot jump into the air at will: it is necessary for something to throw it 
up. In the same way a man needs something to give him a shock, and then he 
will develop exactly as much energy as the shock (or preceding shocks) have 
imparted to him - and not a whit more. This is what positivism teaches. 
From a 
LOGICAL STANDPOINT 
this theory is more correct than the theory of 
two kinds of actions: 
RATIONAL 
and 
IRRATIONAL
. At least it establishes the 
principle of the essential 
UNIFORMITY
. Indeed, how is it possible to suppose 
that in a large machine 
some parts
move according to their own wish and 
judgment? It should be either one or the other. Either all parts of the machine 
possess a realization of their function and act according to this realization, or 
all of them are worked by the same motor and are brought into motion by the 
same driving belt. The enormous service rendered by positivism is that it has 
established this principle of uniformity. It remains for us to determine in 
what this uniformity consists. 
The positivist view of the world asserts that the 
beginning of everything
is 
unconscious 
energy,
produced by unknown causes at some unknown time. 
Having passed through a long series of imperceptible electro-magnetic and 
physico-chemical processes, this energy manifests itself for us in visible and 
tangible motion, then in growth, i.e. in phenomena of life and finally in 
psychological phenomena. 
This view has been examined already and the conclusion drawn that it is 
quite impossible to regard physical phenomena as the cause of 
psychological 
phenomena,
whereas psychological phenomena, on the contrary, often serve 
as an indisputable cause of physical phenomena observed by us. The 
observed process of psychological phenomena arising under the influence of 
external mechanical shocks does not in the least mean that physical 
phenomena originate the psychological ones. They are not the cause but 
merely the shock upsetting the balance. In order that external shocks should 
provoke psychological phenomena an organism is needed, i.e. a complex and 
animated life. The cause of psychological life lies in the organism, in its 
animation which may be defined as the potential of psychological life. 
Moreover, from the very essence of the concept 
motion,
i.e. the basis of the 
physico-mechanical world, we have drawn the conclusion that motion is not 
at all a self-evident truth, that the idea of motion arose in us from the 
limitation and incompleteness of our sense of space (the slit through which 
we observe the world). And we have established that the idea of time is not 
deduced from observation of motion, as is usually supposed, but the idea of 
motion results from our sense of time - and that the idea of motion is quite 
definitely a 

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function of the time-sense
which, in itself, is the limit or the boundary of the space­
sense of a being of a given psychological make-up. It has also been made clear that the 
idea of motion could have arisen from the comparison of two fields of vision. And 
generally the whole analysis of the fundamental categories of our perception of the 
world - of space and time - has shown that we have no grounds whatever for regarding 
motion as a basic principle of the world. 
And if this is so, if it is impossible to assume the existence of an unconscious 
mechanical motor behind the scenes of the world's structure, one is forced to suppose 
that the world is alive and intelligent. Because either one or another thing is true: either 
the world is mechanical and dead, 'accidental', or it is alive and animated. There can be 
nothing dead in living nature, just as there can be nothing alive in dead nature. 
After going through a long period of unconscious and semi-conscious existence in 
the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, nature attains its last great development 
in man, and asks itself: