# On the Conception of ΕΝΕΡΓΕΙΑ ΑΚΙΝΗΣΙΑΣ

Mind, N.S., Vol. 9 No. 36 (Oct., 1900): pp. 457-468.
The aim of this article is to rescue from an unmerited obscurity the Aristotelian ideal of Being, to expound its nature, to remove the paradoxes which it seems, superficially, to involve, and, finally, to show that it alone is competent to satisfy the intellectual and emotional demands we must make upon our conception of Being, and so far to redeem philosophy from the opprobrium of terminating in inconceivable mysteries.
In pursuit of this aim I shall trace (1) the historical antecedents of the doctrine, (2) its statement in Aristotle, (3) its consequences, (4) the objections to it, (5) the replies to them, (6) its advantages over the alternative views; and in so doing I shall, I trust, contribute to the removal of several misconceptions which have long been a source of trouble both in science and in philosophy.
The history of thought, like that of politics, has largely been the history of great antitheses which have kept up their secular conflict from age to age. In the course of that history it may often have seemed that the one side of such an antithesis had finally triumphed over the other, but in the next generation it has often appeared that its rival had rallied its forces and restated its position to such effect that the preponderance of opinion has once more swung back to its side. Perhaps the most important metaphysically of these antitheses is that which has at different times been formulated as that between Γένεσις and Οὐσία, Ἐνέργεια and Ἕξις, Becoming and Being, Change and Immutability, Process and Permanence, and it will be necessary to cast a rapid retrospect over its varying fortunes in order to appreciate the full significance of Aristotle’s doctrine.
It will suffice for this purpose to start with the metaphysic of the Eleatics, taking it as the extremest, crudest, most ​abstract, and therefore most impressive, representative of what I may call, for purposes of reference, the permanence-view of the ultimate nature of existence. In the Eleatics the affirmation of Being took the form of a rigid immutable Ὄν, whose uncompromising unity reduced all motion, change and plurality to an inexplicable illusion, and remorselessly crushed out the whole significance of human life. This uncanny Monism was defended with a dialectical ability which has never since been equalled, and Zeno’s proofs of the impossibility of motion are still full of instruction for philosophers of all schools.
But in the philosophy of Heraclitus Nemesis overtakes the Eleatics. Heraclitus affirms against them the ultimate reality of Becoming, the unlimited all-pervading Process, which unremittingly traverses the ὅδος ἄνω κάτω wherein πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει. In spite of the somewhat sinister denial of permanence implied in this addition, Heracliteanism may well have seemed to restore to the universe the life which Eleaticism had made impossible.
But in Plato the pendulum swings back again to the side of οὐσία. Rightly or wrongly, he detected in Heracliteanism consequences which seemed to him fatal to the possibility of knowledge, and instead of seeking to determine the actual limits of the Flux and the scientific methods by which to know it, he preferred to reject Heracliteanism and to propound a revised, and greatly improved, Eleaticism. He points out our need of a ποῦ στῶ, which is not swept away in the Flux, of a fixed standard whereby to measure and render knowable the flow of Becoming, and in his theory of Ideas he conceived himself to have supplied this demand. In it plurality is recognised in the plurality of the Ideas, united though they are in the Idea of the Good, while the phenomenal world is admitted not to be wholly illusory, being μεταξὺ τοῦ ὄντος καὶ μὴ ὄντος, intermediate between the Ideas and the principle of impermanence, the mystery of which Plato seems to have thought he could resolve by calling it the ‘Non-Existent’.
In the end, however, the Idea remains the only true reality, and the Idea as such is unchanging Being, out of Space and Time. Hence to call anything, e.g., Pleasure, a γένεσις is ipso facto to cast a slur upon its reality and to disqualify it for the position of the Chief Good which must be, he thinks, an abiding οὐσία.
In Aristotle the tables are once more turned. To Aristotle the real world, i.e., the world whereof we desire an explanation, is after all the world of change in which we move and ​live, rather than the system of immutable and timeless ‘laws’ which we devise for its explanation. Hence Plato’s changeless οὐσίαι seem to him too distant and divorced to explain the world. An οὐσία which is not immanent and does not assert itself in the world of phenomena, but remains an inert and secluded δύναμις, is lifeless and worthless. Hence the καθόλου must be in the world and pervade it; or, in his technical phrase, must display itself in actuality (ἐνεργεία). Not that Aristotle denies the validity of the considerations which led Plato to frame his conception of οὐσία; he denies only its adequacy. The highest conception must be Ἐνέργεια and not Δύναμις, the actual functioning of a substance whose real nature is only so revealed.
This is the ultimate reason why Aristotle denies that ἀρετή is the Good, and contends that Ἐυδαιμονία must be ἐνέργεια κατ’ ἀρετήν. A merely statical treatment of the truly valuable will not suffice: the Good is not merely ἀγαθὴ φύσις, it is ἀγαθὴ φύσις in exercise, and a ἕξις is only valuable as the basis and potentiality of an ἐνέργεια.
It follows from this rehabilitation of the Process-view of the world that Aristotle has (a) to establish the superiority of his conception of ἐνέργεια over the Platonic conception of οὐσία, (b) that he has to distinguish it from the conception of κίνησις or γένεσις, which had succumbed to the Platonic criticism.
The first point is of course easy enough to establish. It suffices to point out that a substance apart from its activity is an abstraction (= ‘without causality no substantiality’); or, in Aristotle’s words, that the actuality is naturally prior to the potentiality, that to be is to be active.
The second point is more difficult, and Aristotle’s proof thereof is apt to appear paradoxical to us because of our inveterate habit of regarding a ‘function’ (ἐνέργεια) as a sort of ‘process’ (γένεσις), or even—when we try to be particularly ‘scientific’—as ultimately reducible to a sort of ‘motion’. In other words, we ordinarily subsume Aristotle’s ἐνέργεια under the conception of what he would have called κίνησις. But this is the precise opposite of the device whereby Aristotle turned the flank of the Platonic criticism and established his own conception of Ἐνέργεια. Instead of classifying ἐνέργεια under κίνησις, he simply makes ἐνέργεια ​the wider conception, and includes κίνησις under it as a peculiar species, viz., an imperfect ἐνέργεια.
Κίνησις, that is, arises from the longing of the imperfect for the perfect, of the ὕλη for the εἶδος, and is simply the process whereby it reaches whatever degree of perfection the inherent limitations of its nature concede to it.
Ἐνέργεια, on the other hand, does not essentially or necessarily imply motion or change. In fact in the typical case, the perfect exercise of function by the senses, there is neither κίνησις nor ἀλλοίωσις nor πάσχειν; the appropriate stimulus rouses the organ to activity and the organ functions naturally in grasping it; when this process is free from friction (‘impediment’) perception is perfect and accompanied by ἡδονή.
In man unfortunately, this happy state of things is only temporary: activity cannot be sustained because, owing to the defectiveness (πονηρία or φαυλότης) of a composite nature adulterated with ὕλη, we grow weary and allow our attention to wander and cannot be continuously active (συνεχῶς ἐνεργεῖν).
But God’s case is different; his is a pure and perfect nature; he is pure Form, unimpeded by Matter, and always completely and actually all that he can be. Hence the divine ἐνέργεια is kept up inexhaustibly, and ever generates the supreme pleasure, simple and incorruptible, of self-contemplation (νόησις νοήσεως), which constitutes the divine happiness. It follows, as a matter of course, that this ἐνέργεια is above and beyond κίνησις; it is ἐνέργεια ἀκινησίας or ἠρεμία. Hence in a famous passage we are told that “if the nature of anything were simple, the same action would ever be sweetest to it. And this is the reason why God always enjoys a single and simple pleasure; for there is not only an activity of motion, but also one void of motion, and pleasure is rather in constancy than in motion. And ​change of all things is sweet, as the poet has it, because of a certain defect.”
The significance of this passage has been generally ignored, and the commentators say as little about it as they conveniently can. Thus, of the two latest editors of the Ethics, Prof. Stewart accuses Aristotle of waxing poetical, while Prof. Burnet finds nothing to say about it at all; and as this has occurred after I had done my utmost to call attention to it, I think I may assume that still further comment is needed to help modern minds to grasp the beauty and importance of Aristotle’s thought.
It follows from the above that the perfect or divine life is one of unceasing and unchanging activity, which is eternal consciousness of supreme happiness. And yet nothing happens in it. It is eternal, not in the illusory sense in which geometrical triangles and epistemological monstrosities (like e.g., Green’s Eternal Self-Consciousness) are put out of Time by a trick of abstraction, but because it can be shown to have a positive nature, which precludes the conditions out of which time-consciousness arises. For, as Aristotle was well aware, Time is a creature of Motion, it depends on the motions whereby alone it can be measured; it is κινήσεως ἀριθμός. If then κίνησις arises out of the imperfection of an ἐνέργεια, the perfecting of an ἐνέργεια will necessarily involve the disappearance of Time, together with that of motion. Or, as I have elsewhere expressed it, Time is the measure of the impermanence of the imperfect, and the perfecting of the time-consciousness would carry us out of Time into Eternity. In other words, the conception of Ἐνέργεια Ἀκινησίας is a scientific formulation of the popular theological conceptions of Heaven and Eternity.
Of course all this sounds unfamiliar and fantastical and is not quite easy to grasp—if it had been the notions of Heaven and Eternity would hardly have become targets for ​so much cheap scorn. And it is needless also to deny that there seems to be a paradox here which demands a defence.
The paradox is that there can be activity, life and consciousness without change, imperfection or decay. This seems an utter paradox because in our actual experience consciousness is a succession of mental states or processes, life is sustained by a continual metabolism, and activities are recognised only by the changes which they exhibit. We do not therefore hesitate to regard a changeless activity as equivalent to rest, i.e., as cessation of activity, as death.
About these facts, of course, there is no dispute. All motions are measured by the unequal rates of change, and when two bodies maintain the same position relatively to each other, they are taken to be at rest. Similarly it is not denied that vital function consumes living tissue, nor that consciousness is a continuous flow of experiences.
The only question is as to what inferences we are entitled to draw from these facts, and by what conceptions we are to interpret a transcending of change such as is conceivable, though not imaginable.
Accordingly I propose to show: (1) That we are not entitled to infer from the facts the impossibility of an ἐνέργεια ἀκινησίας; (2) that it is by this conception rather than by that of ‘rest’ that the ultimate ideal of existence should be interpreted. I shall show this of the conceptions of Motion, Life and Consciousness in turn.
(a) It has long been admitted that Motion tends to equilibrium, and that in a perfect equilibrium there would be no (perceptible) motion and no available energy.
Under the name of the dissipation of energy this fact of its equilibration has become the great bugbear of physics and has given rise to the gloomiest vaticinations concerning the inevitable decadence and ultimate doom of the universe.
This whole difficulty arises out of our habit of contemplating equilibration as cessation of Motion or ‘Rest’. An ​equilibrated universe cannot change and its latent energy cannot be used to change it. Ergo such a universe is ‘played out’.
But why should we not regard it as a case of Ἐνέργεια Ἀκινησίας, as a perfecting of Motion until it has everywhere become perfectly regular, steady, smooth and frictionless? Logically, in fact, this seems a far preferable alternative. Suppose, e.g., an equilibrium of temperature. If two bodies are at equal temperatures, does that mean that they have ceased to have temperature? Have they ceased to radiate out heat, or (to put it in terms of the current theory about heat) to exhibit the molecular vibrations which appear to our temperature-sense as heat? Surely not: it means that each body receives as much ‘heat’ as it radiates, that the ‘molecular motions’ proceed with entire regularity and constant velocities. But if so, is it not a condition of Activity (ἐνέργεια), not of Rest?
(b) In the case of Life it is somewhat easier to conceive perfection as a changeless activity, because we are more inclined to regard life as depending on a harmony of changes rather than on the mere instability of organic processes. Thus if with Spencer we conceive life as an adjustment of internal to external relations (‘mutual adjustment’ would be better!), it is evident that the success of life will depend on the degree of correspondence, however attained, between the organism and its environment. Perfect correspondence therefore would be perfect life, and might be conceived as arising by a gradual perfecting of the correspondence until the organism either adapted itself completely to an unchanging environment or instantaneously and pari passu to a changing one, in such wise that the moment of non-adaptation (if any) was too brief to come into consciousness. In both these cases the relation of the organism to its environment would be unchangingly the same. It would persist therefore in being what it was, in expressing its nature in its activities, without alteration or decay, gaining nothing and losing nothing, because of the perfect equipoise of waste and repair.
That such an equilibrium is not unthinkable we may gather from the conceptions of a balance of income and expenditure, of the ‘stationary state’ of economics and of perfect justice as a social harmony in which each maintains his own position in society without aggression on others. Surely in none of these cases could it be asserted that there was a cessation of social or industrial relations. Once more the apparent paradox arises merely out of the habit of interpreting ἐνέργεια ἀκινησίας as a cessation of activity.
​But it is this latter view which is really unthinkable, as may be illustrated by taking a hypothetical case of a growing adaptation or harmony on the way to the perfection, the interpretation of which is disputed.
It will be admitted that in the stage immediately preceding perfect adaptation the organism is very much alive, and moreover carries on its life with a minimum of friction and a maximum of success. In such a life difficulties would exist only to be overcome, and any process of adapting would be only momentary. Now suppose it to become instantaneous. We are required to believe that in the very moment when the last trace of maladaptation is eliminated, life suddenly and inexplicably ceases, and the organism, which but the moment before had been rejoicing in its might, is with scarce a noticeable change suddenly smitten with metaphysical annihilation! A catastrophe like this could be paralleled by nothing in nature or literature except the tragic fate which overwhelmed Lewis Carroll’s Baker “in the midst of his laughter and glee,” when the Snark he had so successfully chased turned out to be a Boojum, and he “softly and silently vanished away”!
And so the principle of continuity compels us to think the ἀκινησία of perfect adaptation, to which all κινήσεις point, as ζῳὴ καὶ ἐνέργεια, as Aristotle contended.
(c) In the case of Consciousness the same interpretation certainly seems at first sight to involve greater difficulties. For what most impresses us about consciousness is the flux of Becoming, which is the world’s aspiration to Being. Consciousness flows with a fluidity which is quite incapable of precise, and almost of intelligible, statement. It is a perpetual transition from object to object, not one of which it can retain for a fraction of a second, and in which nothing ever occurs twice. To suggest, then, that it may persist, in what would amount to a timeless contemplation of unchanging objects, would seem to be madly flying in the face of all the facts.
Nevertheless, the Aristotelian theory has no need to fly in any one’s face or ever to leave the solid ground of legitimate inference. It has no quarrel with the facts: it only disputes about their interpretation. To infer from the facts the ‘relativity’ of all consciousness and Hobbes’ dictum sentire semper idem et nil sentire ad idem recidunt appears to it either a truism or an error, and in no wise decisive. It is a truism, if it asserts that sensation in time involves change, and that ​all our experience is in time. It is an error, if it is taken as the starting-point of an argument which either proposes to conduct us out of consciousness and to represent it as an unmeaning accident in a scheme of things which when perfectly equilibrated would transcend it, or even to bind us Ixion-like on an unresting wheel of change.
For the facts are susceptible of a better interpretation. May not the flow of appearances be due to a defect of consciousness engendered as an adaptive response to the impermanence of a defective world? Is it not a πονηρία of a φύσις impotent συνεχῶς ἐνεργεῖν?
At all events it seems to be the case that (1) we strive to prolong and retain pleasant states and objects of consciousness; (2) the fluttering of attention is protective, and necessary to survival under conditions which render it unsafe to become too much absorbed by the object of our attention (or attentions), lest something to which we have failed to attend should absorb us in a too literal sense; (3) even where practical exigencies do not compel us, we have to shift the objects of our attention because we never find them wholly satisfying. The unsatisfactoriness in this case would be the cause of the impermanence, and not vice versa. But could we once attain an object of contemplation which was wholly satisfying, should we not seek to retain it in consciousness for ever? If we had achieved το ἄριστον, should we wish to change it, for the worse? if we had once reached heaven, should we lust again for the vicissitudes of earth?
Surely it follows from the very conception of the Good that it should be a permanent possession; and if it is attainable at all, it can only be as an ἐνέργεια ἀκινησίας. I suspect, therefore, that the objection to ἐνέργεια ἀκινησίας is at bottom one to the whole notion of an attainable ἀγαθὸν. But whether the advocates of this objection are naively optimistic enough to imagine that an unattainable ideal, recognised as such, continues to be an ideal a rational being can aim at, or whether they are pessimistic enough to renounce all ideals altogether, it is their notion and not that of ἐνέργεια which is fundamentally paradoxical.
As before, we may illustrate this more concretely by examining the moment immediately preceding the hypothetical fixation of consciousness. It must be reached, of course, by a progressive development of consciousness in fulness and intensity and power of attention and the gradual suppression of all interruptions and discords. There can be no doubt, therefore, that it is consciousness in a very high sense, i.e., a contemplation, most pleasant and ​unimpeded, of that which most delights the soul. If now we eliminated the last faint source of trouble and unrest and disturbance, which prevented us from concentrating our attention wholly upon what it most loves to dwell on, why should consciousness go out rather than go on? Will it not become rather absolutely constant and continuous, and remain conscious sensu eminentiori?
The Ἐνέργεια Ἀκινησίας then is conceivable, if we choose to understand it. Indeed one might proceed to maintain that ultimately it alone is conceivable as the ideal of Being.
Of its rivals, the conception of Becoming, as philosophers have had to recognise from Parmenides to Hegel, is infected with insoluble contradictions, which disappear only if we follow Aristotle in conceiving it as ἐνέργεια ἀτελής. For in this event all the processes we actually observe may be regarded as pointing forward to an ideal of a perfectly and equably self-sustaining activity, to attain which would relieve them of their contradictions.
The ideal of Rest, on the other hand, is wholly illusory: there is no rest anywhere attainable for the wicked or the virtuous. It is non-existent as a fact, and it is non-existence as a conception. For if anything could really cease to be active, it would cease to be. We cannot, therefore, interpret existence by the conception of Rest, unless, indeed, it pleases us (with Mainländer) to regard the history of the world as the protracted agony of the Absolute’s suicide.
Compared with these, the advantages of the conception of Ἐνέργεια Ἀκινησίας are manifest.
It enables us to give a scientific interpretation of the religious conception of Heaven and to differentiate it from that of Nirvâna ( = ‘bliss conceived as rest’). It involves a positive conception of Eternity and explains the transition from ‘Time’ to Eternity.
We avoid, moreover, sundry difficulties. We may dismiss the apprehension of an equilibration of cosmic energy to be regarded as the final destruction of cosmic activity. We may thus avoid henceforth Spencer’s inconsistency in regarding equilibration now as universal death, now as perfect life, according as physical or biological analogies come uppermost in his mind.
​After this it seems almost trivial to mention that (as has long been recognised) the Aristotelian conception of ἐνέργεια affords no foothold for the ‘unknowable substrate’ view of Substance, since the δύναμις is entirely dependent on the ​ἐνέργεια. Once, therefore, all potentialities were realised, the antithesis between appearance and reality would disappear in their coincidence. And a κόσμος composed of ἐνέργειαι ἀκινησίας would have nothing to fear from an irruption of incalculable and inexplicable ‘Things-in-themselves’. And finally, in spite of the risk of exposing myself to a charge of a μεταβάσις εὶς ἄλλο γένος, I cannot forbear to point out that no one who believes that it is the duty of philosophy to systematise the whole of experience can fail to appreciate the great practical value of putting before men a metaphysical ideal of Being which stimulates us to be active and to develop all our powers to the utmost, while at the same time warning us that such self-realisation must assume the form, not of a hideous, barbarous and neurotic restlessness, or of an infinite (and therefore futile) striving and struggle, but of the harmonious equipoise of an Ἐνέργεια Ἀκινησίας.
* ↑ Cf., esp. Eth. Nich., ix., 7, 4 (1168 a 6) ἐσμὲν δ’ ἐνέργεια.
* ↑ Cf., e.g., Physics, iii., 2, 201 b 31., ἥ τε κίνησις ἐνέργεια μὲν εἶναί τις δοκεῖ, ἀτελὴς δέ, viii. 5, 257 b 8, ἔστιν δ' ἡ κίνησις ἐντελέχεια κινητοῦ ἀτελής. De Anima, ii., 5, 417 a 16, ἔστιν ἡ κίνησις ἐνέργειά τις, ἀτελὴς μέντοι: iii., 2, 431 a 5, φαίνεται δὲ τὸ μὲν αἰσθητὸν ἐκ δυνάμει ὄντος τοῦ αἰσθητικοῦ ἐνεργείᾳ ποιοῦν· οὐ γὰρ πάσχει οὐδ' ἀλλοιοῦται (sc. τὸ αἰσθητὸν), διὸ ἄλλο εἶδος τοῦτο κινήσεως; ἡ γὰρ κίνησις τοῦ ἀτελοῦς ἐνέργεια, ἡ δ' ἁπλῶς ἐνέργεια ἑτέρα, ἡ τοῦ τετελεσμένου. Metaph., Θ, 6, 1048 b 29 πᾶσα γὰρ κίνησις ἀτελής. Cf. also Eth. Nich., x., 3, 1174 a 19, where it is explained that ἡδονὴ is not κίνησις, because it does not need perfecting (being indeed what itself perfects ἐνέργεια, while κίνησις does.
* ↑ Eth. Nich., x., 4, 5, 1174 b 14.
* ↑ Ibid., x., 4, 9, 1175 a 4.
* ↑ This is true also of the heavenly bodies, by reason of their more perfect ὕλη. Cf. Metaph., 1050 b 22.
* ↑ Eth. Nich., vii., 14, 8 (1154 b 25-31).
* ↑ ἠρεμία cannot be translated ‘rest’ without misleading. For ‘rest’ to us = non-activity, which to Aristotle is tantamount to non-existence. He uses the word in order to express the steady and effortless maintenance of a perfect equilibrium. Cf. An. Post., ii., 19, where the same word is used to describe the emergence of the logical universal, i.e., of the constancy of meaning, out of the flux of psychological ‘ideas’.
* ↑ Cf. also Metaph., Λ. 7, 1072 b 16.
* ↑ Riddles of the Sphinx, p. 443.
* ↑ Ibid. ch. ix., 11.
* ↑ Strictly the ‘degradation’ or ‘dissipation’ of energy is said to apply only to finite portions of the universe, and consolation is sometimes sought in the thought that the universe is possibly infinite, and that in an infinite anything may happen. Now it is true that the doctrine of the dissipation of energy ceases to apply to an infinite universe, but the reason is merely that in view of an actual infinity, all propositions become unmeaning. And an infinite universe or whole involves a contradiction in terms, and is a pseudo-conception which can be reached only by a confusion of thought. Cf. Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. ix., §§ 2-9.
* ↑ Cf. Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. xii., § 5.
* ↑ As the chapter on the subject in First Principles affords an admirable example of the confusion engendered by a lack of the conception of ἐνέργειαι ἀκινησίας, it may be useful to trace Mr. Spencer’s utterances in detail. It will be seen that he keeps on contradicting himself as to the character of equilibration on alternate pages, and speaks with a double voice throughout. (a) By the first voice it is conceived as death or cessation of activity. Thus § 173: “there finally results that complete equilibration we call death”. § 176: “the final question of Evolution is . . . incidental to the universal process of equilibration; and if equilibration must end in complete rest . . . if the solar system is slowly dissipating its forces . . . are we not manifestly progressing towards omnipresent death?” He answers that even though the “proximate end of all the transformations we have traced is a state of quiescence,” an “ulterior process may reverse these changes and initiate a new life”. (Hence, too, the see-saw of Evolution and Dissolution is deduced in ch. 23.) Again in § 182 he asks “Does Evolution as a whole, like Evolution in detail, advance towards complete quiescence? Is that motionless state called death, which ends Evolution in organic bodies, typical of the universal death in which Evolution at large must end?” . . . “If, pushing to its extreme the argument that Evolution must come to a close in complete equilibration or rest, the reader suggests that, for aught which appears to the contrary, the Universal Death thus implied will continue indefinitely, it is legitimate to point out” that we may “infer a subsequent Universal Life” if we suppose equilibration to be again upset, or (more properly) unattainable. In short, equilibration = ‘death’. (b) The above seems unequivocal enough until we listen to the second voice, which exactly inverts the valuation of equilibration and non-equilibration, and implies the equation, ‘equilibration = life’. E.g. § 173 (init.), death is explained as due to a failure of equilibration, § 173 (s.f.), the life of a species depends on an equilibration between the forces that tend to increase and to destroy it. § 174, an equilibration or correspondence between idea and fact is the end of mental evolution, and “equilibration can end only when each relation of things has generated in us a relation of thought” . . . and then “experience will cease to produce any further mental evolution—there will have been reached a perfect correspondence between ideas and facts; and the intellectual adaptation of man to his circumstances will be complete”. So, of moral and emotional adaptation—“the limit towards which emotional adaptation perpetually tends . . . is a combination of desires that corresponds to all the different orders of activity which the circumstances of life call for” . . . and this “progressive adaptation ceases only with the establishment of a complete equilibration between constitution and conditions”. Again, § 174 (s.f.), “Thus the ultimate state . . . is one in which the kinds and quantities of mental energy generated . . . are equivalent to, or in equilibrium with, the various orders ... of surrounding forces which antagonise such motions”, § 175, Equilibrium is held up as the economic ideal from which the fluctuations of over- and under-production depart. It is the all-inclusive ne plus ultra of the adaptation of “man’s nature and the conditions of his existence”. It is also the social ideal, and limits the process towards heterogeneity—“the ultimate abolition of all limits to the freedom of each, save those imposed by the like freedom of all, must result from the complete equilibration between man’s desires and the conduct necessitated by surrounding conditions”. And cf. lastly the sublime conclusion of the chapter (§ 176), in which equilibrium, guaranteed by the Persistence of Force, secures to us the prospect of perfect happiness by affording “a basis for the inference that there is a gradual advance towards harmony between man’s mental nature and the conditions of his existence,” and “we are finally bidden to believe that Evolution can end only in the establishment of the greatest perfection and most complete happiness”! The italics, of course, are mine throughout. As for the contradiction, it is striking, but easily explicable. The suppressed middle term, which connects the two conflicting views of the value of perfect equilibration, is the absence of motion or change. This being a characteristic both of ‘death’ and complete adaptation, the interpretation wavers in the most tantalising way.
Footnotes
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