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.[1]
This whole difficulty arises out of our habit of contemplating equilibration as cessation of Motion or ‘Rest’. An
- ↑ 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.
