The Metaphysics of a Naturalist 
51 
(He might have added, of equilibrium.) When several such 
responses arise, they fuse (again in equilibrium). The souhs 
acts of self-preservation are ideas. That is, the form which the 
pure spontaneity of the soul takes in returning to equilibrium 
from impact or limitation is intelligent. 
Maine de Biran among later French philosophers most clearly 
formulates the dynamic position. 
Effort made by the will and directly perceived, constitutes the ego, 
the individuality, the primary fact of the inner sense.” ^^The idea of 
force is the corollary of that of effort.” “1 will, I think, therefore I am 
. I am not a vaguely thinking thing, but a definitely willing 
thing, which passes from will to action by its own energy, as it resolves 
within itself or acts beyond itself. ” 
The idealistic mysticism here needs to be qualified by an 
explicit identification of being in general as action and a proper 
recognition of spontaneity as a function of all unconditioned effort. 
The unfortunate polemics of Schopenhauer have blinded many 
to the force of the masterly argument in his World as Will and 
Idea; and many read the poetry of Coleridge without penetrating 
through the wordy husk to the philosophic truth it seems to 
obscure rather than reveal. Schopenhauer says, for example, 
^‘The true being of matter is its action, nor can we possibly conceive 
it as having any other meaning. Only as active does it fill space and 
time.” Cause and effect thus constitute the whole nature of matter; 
its true being is its action.” 
Goethe, who 'was a dynamic monist so far as he was a philoso- 
pher at all, recognized that ^Hm Anfang war die That.’^ 
