PURE SPONTANEITY 
Distinctly Lotzean in its derivation though not in its immediate 
formulation, is Professor Herrick^s doctrine of pure spontaneity. 
Activity or energy, he says, is the fundamental category of experi- 
ence. Reality consists in the standing in relation of things and 
this relation is dynamic. Realities are not simply thought to- 
gether; they work together.^^ The earliest method of intuition 
or knowing is also the most accurate. It consists in the recogni- 
tion of action or change, that is, a doing, as the fundamental fact 
of experience. 
The very simplest concept of reality and the first to develop in 
the mind of the child is pure spontaneity from which it is the 
work of all later education to drive him as far as possible. The 
child is near the appreciation of the Absolute’^ as heaven is 
near us in our infancy. To the child the trees just wave of them- 
selves and he recognizes in himself similar spontaneity; but when 
the idea of cause is introduced it is quite as likely that the child 
will think of the trees causing the wind to blow as the reverse. 
Causality is imperfectly understood energy. 
Later life is so sophisticated by the interpretations of the 
experience of life that language has but few relics of the primi- 
tive idea of being as simple action, as in the expressions, ^Tt 
rains, ’’ “it blows, and these are mostly cases where the applica- 
tion of the idea of special causes is difficult or has been late in 
arriving. To the child “it mews’’ and “it barks” just as, in 
the language of the savage, “it thunders.” We begin, as the 
child does, with the fundamental conception of activity. When, 
if ever, we are able to say something definite about the hidden 
ground or reason for change it will be time to speak of the thing 
that acts. 
Our knowledge of the existence of things or events is due to 
changes in consciousness, i. e., to activities. All we know of the 
external world is in the form of changes in our being. It is true 
27 “The Dynamic Concept of the Individual/' Journal of Philosophy, Psy- 
chology and Scientific Methods, vol. 1, 1904, p. 377. 
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