The Metaphysics of a Naturalist 
45 
monism such as that proposed by Fechner, which represents 
body and soul as two aspects of one reality, employing the well- 
worn but specious comparison between the inside and outside of 
the same curve. The illustration serves very prettily to show 
the illusoriness of such distinctions, for the outside and inside of 
a curve are expressions disguising a whole world of foreign impli- 
cations ; as, for example, the relation of the curve to some arbitrarily 
chosen locus and the simultaneous relation of two other points 
which are also observers or reference data — in short, the pretty 
illustration involves the whole machinery of descriptive geometry, 
without which the meaning of aspects” would disappear. 
In precisely the same way the illustration when carried into 
psychology implies a complicated system of ontology thinly 
disguised under an apparently naive appeal to experience. 
Returning to the illustration, the only idea of curve suited to 
the conditions of our problem is that which regards it as a tra- 
jectory and discovers in it the equation of force and resistance — 
spontaneity and limitation. At this point the idea of resistance 
inevitably gives trouble, as it always has and always will. On 
this head it is sufficient to note that unity of source of energy 
does not necessarily imply unity or monotony of form. Energy 
as infinite can but be self-limiting. The self-limitations of the 
Deity are ipso facto creative, i. e., creation is the translation of 
energy into force. 
Quite recently Professor Ostwald of Leipzig has appeared in 
the field as a champion of dynamic monism and has effectively 
presented its claims in an address at Luebeck which may be 
familiar to most through the translation which appeared in 
Science Progress” for February, 1896. He said: 
“If it [the mechanical construction of the universe] appears a vain 
undertaking, ending with every serious attempt in final failure, to give 
a mechanical representation of the known phenomena of physics, we 
are driven to the conclusion that similar attempts in the incomparably 
more complicated phenomena of organic life will be still less likely to 
succeed.” “We must give up all hope of getting a clear idea of the 
physical world by referring phenomena to an atomistic mechanics.” 
In the opinion of the writer, we shall never make much progress 
in the interpretation of the fundamental nature of consciousness 
and its correlates until we frankly recognize a dynamic principle 
underlying the whole. 
26 cf, “The Passing of Scientific Materialism/’ The Monist, January, 1905. 
