Tertium Organum

amount of 
energy is constant, 
we must specify more precisely that all the preceding 
statements referred not to the 
creation of
new energy, but to the 
liberation of 
latent energy. Moreover, we have found that the liberating force of life and 
thought is infinitely greater than the liberating force of mechanical motion 
and chemical influences. A 
microscopic living cell is more powerful than a 
volcano - an idea is mightier than a geological cataclysm. 
Having established these distinctions between phenomena, let us try to 
find out what phenomena represent, taken by themselves, independently of 
our perception and feeling of them. 
We shall see at once that we know nothing about this. 
A phenomenon is known to the extent that it is an 
irritation, 
i.e. to the 
extent that it causes a sensation. 
Positivist philosophy sees at the root of all phenomena mechanical 

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motion or electro-magnetic energy. But the hypothesis of vibrating atoms or 
of 
units of energy -
electrons - and of cycles of motion, different 
combinations of which create different 'phenomena' - all this is nothing but a 
hypothesis, based on a totally artificial and arbitrary assumption that the 
world exists in time and space. If we find that the conditions of time and 
space are only properties of our sense-perception, we absolutely abolish any
possibility of the hypothesis of 'energy' as the foundation of everything;
because energy requires time and space, i.e. it requires the conditions of time 
and space to be the properties of the world and not properties of 
consciousness. Thus, in reality, we know nothing about the 
causes of 
phenomena. 
We know that certain combinations of causes, acting on our con­
sciousness through the medium of the organism, produce a series of 
sensations which we are aware of as a 
green tree.
But whether the 
representation of the tree corresponds to the real essence of the causes which 
have evoked these sensations, we do not know. 
The question of the relation of a phenomenon to 
the thing in itself, 
i.e. to 
the essence contained in it, has been, since very remote times, the main and 
most difficult problem of philosophy. Can we, by studying phenomena, reach 
their causes, the very essence of things? Kant said definitely: 
No,
in studying
phenomena we do not even come nearer to the understanding of a thing in 
itself. And, recognizing the correctness of Kant's view, if we wish to come 
nearer to understanding things in themselves, we should seek an entirely new 
method, a way completely different from the one followed by positivist 
science which studies events 
or phenomena. 

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CHAPTER 13
The apparent and the hidden side of life. Positivism as the study of the phenomenal 
aspect of life. What constitutes the 'two-dimensionality' of positivist philosophy? 
Envisaging everything on one plane, in one physical sequence. Streams flowing under 
the earth. What can the study of life, as a phenomenon, give? The artificial world 
which science builds for itself. The non-existence, in actual fact, of completed and 
isolated phenomena. A new sense of the world. 
There are visible and hidden causes of phenomena, there are visible and 
hidden effects. 
Let us take an example. 
In all the text-books on the history of literature it is said that in its time 
Werther
produced in Germany an epidemic of suicides. 
What did produce these suicides? 
Let us now imagine that some 'scientist' appears who, being interested in 
the fact of increased suicides, begins to study the first edition of