Published Monthly THE EGOIST No. 8.—VOL. V. SEPTEMBER 1918. SIXPENCE. Editor : HARRIET SHAW WEAVER Contributing Editor : Assistant Editor : T. S. ELIOT DORA MARSDEN CONTENTS PAGE PAOB PHILOSOPHY : THE SCIENCE OF SIGNS. XVI. OUR THE FRENCH WORD IN MODERN PROSE. XII. JEAN- RICHARD BLOCH. By Madame Ciolkowska . 108 PHILOSOPHY OF THE "REAL" (continued). By D. CHARITY AND GRACE IN THE WORK OF MAY SINCLAIR. Marsden ........ 101 By Jean de Bosschère . .109 " TARR." By T. S. Eliot 105 VISION. By Mary Butts 111 EARLY TRANSLATORS OF HOMER. II. ANDREAS DIVUS. THE MEDITATION OF A LOVER AT DAYBREAK. By Her­ By Ezra Pound . • . .106 bert Read 111 XVI. OUR PHILOSOPHY OF THE " REAL " (continued) IV. Space and Substance By D. MARSDEN time principally exhausts itself. The third motor- VIII mode is that newly evolved motor-activity relative (81) HOW closely our theory binds together the facts to symbolization which collectively form i the intellect. of reality and time we have already indicated. Time The supervention of the latter being happily coinci­ we defined as the potentiality for organic movement dent with a specialized development of the spatial slowly accumulated in, and impregnated upon, the power in the form of hands, their co-incident action organic tissues, and bequeathed both as to capital has proved responsible—in a fashion we have already and interest from organic form to form. We pointed described—for that unique form of activity called out that the human organism, with its mechanism realizing which has reacted with such amazing fruit- adapted for symbolization, brought with it the power fulness in the transformation and development of to differentiate simple time into the complexities of substance. Any explanation of reality therefore past and future time, and that it is indeed only with involves every one of these terms. In sum: space, working with this fact as a basis that the activity substance, and intellect are three modes of time, and of realizing together with the whole notion of reality reality is an important, though secondary, compounded has arisen. Only when these two new wings of time effect arising out of their coincident operations. had furnished the stage necessary if the interwoven (84) Having now indicated these larger relation­ activities of speech and manual construction were to ships of our subjects, we may limit ourselves in our pursue their transforming career did the conception present study to their more circumscribed aspects: of making ideas real assume form. When we defined all forms of experience as forms (82) Now just as an explanation of reality which f feeling, and then defined feeling as forms of move­ failed to reveal the latter's relationship to time would ment in the tissues of the experiencing organism, we perforce be concerning itself only with the more committed ourselves to a definition of space and superficial bearings of the subject, so would an substance no less than of any other experiential form. explanation of reality which failed to relate the latter Hence, allowing these definitions, all subsequent to the ideas of space and substance be limited to the consideration of space and substance will be limited merely formal difficulties of the subject. As a to a detailing of the specific differences characteristic matter of fact, the ideas of time, space, substance, and of the particular motor-forms composing them. It reality, together with that of intellect, combine to is upon a consideration of such a limited scope that make a schematic logical whole, and the actual we have to be understood as entering here. meaning of "explanation" in relation to them (85) Circumscribed, however, from the outset as consists in the orderly setting forth of their com­ we thus are by our most elemental definitions, the plementary relationship towards one another. conceptions of space and substance still remain so (83) It is in this fashion that it follows that, defining primary that any survey of them will keep us in the time as the total motor-potentiality of any organism, region of our most fundamental vital facts. Our space and substance prove definable as two out of first step, therefore, will be to recall the definition the three motor-modes into which the totality of which at an earlier stage we gave of the term life 102 THE EGOIST September 1918 itself. Life we described as a power to establish a organism has an affinity, the body moves externally complex motor-system consisting of an organism with a view to the sensation's prolongation or in­ plus an extra-organic fringe; that is to say, of a tensification. If it is one to which it is antipathetic "me" plus a "not-me": or of a self plus a corre­ it moves so as to ensure the sensation's diminution or lated world. The contradictions seemingly involved cessation. It is in this way that we hive to regard in these paradoxical conditions we sought to resolve the spatial power of movement as the organism's by insisting that the vital unit or universal was the ego auxiliary, or reactive mode, by means of which rather than the organism. In this universe, the judgment is effected upon the substantial creations organic body itself constitutes only the active creative themselves, since it serves either to intensify and nucleus, while the effects of its creative activity fall prolong them, or to furnish an avenue of escape from into two great categories of organic movement, i.e. them. The complementary character of the two sensations and action proper, according as they spring modes is to be emphasized. Such emphasis must not, from the one or other of the organism's two main however, blind us to the fact that each is absolute in motor-modes: the substantial and the spatial itself. The spatial activity, for instance, is not able respectively. to annihilate, override, or efface the products of the (86) The first category, i.e. that of sensations, substantial activity. All that it can do is to nego­ consists of motor-forms enacted in localized organic tiate and manoeuvre them, and under certain pro­ areas upon tissues interiorly connected with the cedures, which the intellect and the hands have made localized sense-organs lying just within the organic possible for the human organism, to transmute them. surface. In their total effects, these comprise the sense-forms of substance with the secondary qualities IX of sound, colour, and scent. Along with the cha­ (89) The idea of space took its origin in men's racteristics of these sense-forms just enumerated, minds as the spontaneous logical translation of the however, we have to associate that of projectivity: a limited power of the organic nucleus to negotiate sense-aspect which is very readily overlooked on sensory forms, either by moving through them or account of its unvarying incidence with each and round them. The idea sprang up betimes in man's every sensory form. For while sensory effects are cultural history, and came by its most indelibly produced by movements within the organic body, marked features at a time when man was more the prime feature admitting of discrimination from habituated to the acceptance of sense-forms at their their total complex is that of projection beyond the face value than he is now. There was, accordingly, organic body. It is this feature which occasions the about his notion of space neither mistiness nor externality relative to that body common to all uncertainty. When his body on its external surface sensory phenomena. The very genius of the dual- was able to move, he said there space existed. When aspected activity which we call living resides in this such progress was blocked by sensory forms he said power to produce, by means of a mechanism within there existed no space. As a matter of fact it has the body, sense-effects which appear as projected to be acknowledged that he associated his term space beyond it. Thus an organism proves itself an organism with the medium through which his limbs moved, by the exercise of the power to possess itself of an rather than with the movement itself. We, however, external world. Considered in absolute detachment shall claim that an intelligent and coherent account from its external world, an organism is therefore a can be rendered of space only when the term is applied pure contradiction. As the organism is, so its world is. to the bodily movement itself. Space, we shall say, is A world is precisely the expression of what is essen­ organic movement precisely as these sensory sur­ tially organic in any organism, and the world-fringe roundings themselves are, but that it is limited as to element in the egoistic universe bears an exact its expression to movement of the nucleus-body relation to the creative power of the nucleus which among its sensory surroundings, while the sensory not only experiences it but creates it. forms are composed of movement passing over the (87) This conception of a vital unit comprehending interiorly situated tissues, which connect up with the at once both the organic body and its related external sense-organs lying just within the surface. Organic world is, to our mind, the sole one logically capable movement will, therefore, be responsible not only for of accommodating all the vital facts : the sole one the "contents" of space, i.e. the sense-forms them­ capable of resolving the baffling antinomies which selves, but also for what the ancients called the crop out in every attempt to render into a logical "containing vessel" of such contents, i.e. space statement the riddle of existence.