The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Dunan - Le problème de la vie - Part 3
In this article D. examines certain fundamental problems by the light of his theory. Are living beings finite or infinite in number? To say that they are potentially infinite does not avoid the difficulty, for such infinitude can be applied only to ideal objects, and living beings do not depend for their existence on our mental operations. On the other hand, it is inconceivable to regard them as actually limitless. The truth is, they can form neither infinite nor finite number, the category of number being altogether inapplicable to them. Every organism is unique and irreducible, absolutely different from all others. All together, these living beings form among themselves a series, a continuous gradation. D. accepts Leibniz's law of indiscernibles. The next question deals with the finitude or infinitude of the universe in time and space. However we may reason concerning empirical, i.e. homogeneous time and space in this connection, absurdities must follow. Empirical time and space are not true time and space. Since metaphysical time and space have neither duration nor extension, they cannot be characterized as finite or infinite. These terms are not categories of existence itself, but of represented existence. Another problem presents itself. In rejecting universal mechanism, we have apparently rejected the only conception which renders intelligible the unity of the phenomenal world and perhaps repudiated the notion of causality itself. And by abandoning the law of final causes we have evidently lost our only means of comprehending the co-ordination of the parts of the universe and of organic life. Causality may not be able to be reduced to mechanism, yet it exists; finality may not be intentional, yet it cannot be explained away. How and under what form are we going to recover causality and finality? According to common notions of causation, a consequent B is invariably determined by an antecedent A. Here every series of phenomena would be independent of all other series, and constitute a world of its own. But the fact that every phenomenon in the universe is localized in time and space implies an interdependence of all past, present, and future phenomena. The objections urged against this view rest on the assumption that causality is phenomenal. It is, however, a metaphysical unity anterior and superior to all manifoldness. This metaphysical cause must not be identified with Eleatic being, it is an absolute in a state of becoming and transformation. The living being possesses these characteristics. What makes the universe an object of consciousness is that it is an object of science. What renders it an object of science is the unity established in every phenomenal series by the mechanical correlations of all the phenomena of the series. Science is mechanical, and can be nothing else. But when it excludes all metaphysics, it does itself become metaphysical par excellence. Finality, though commonly understood as the principle and condition of the metaphysical unity of the living, is in reality but a consequence of this. The unity of the whole, and the harmony or order of the parts, are one and the same thing. The underlying force is a vital force, working for the conservation of the entire organism. From this same principle intelligence itself proceeds, having the same origin as physical life. Now as to the question of freedom. The metaphysical nature of the living being implies its autonomy or liberty. Liberty must be conceived as a necessary and universal attribute of all beings, not in an absolute but in a relative sense. The relative indetermination of an organism's actions is also a logical consequence of our theories in the nature of time. But though our principle makes freedom a certain fact, we cannot understand how such a fact is possible. A free being implies an absolute being, and a plurality of absolute beings is something altogether incomprehensible. This theory also solves the problem of our final destiny. It promises us no other existence after the present, there is no before or after. We are eternal, and the eternal life is a personal life. Our being will no longer be constituted in part by a nature foreign to it, we shall be face to face with God. God is the pure and absolute spirit, the supreme life, in which all finite lives have both their beginning and their end, the mover and master of all nature, the principle of all justice and love.