e and interdependence. Each
object is related to something else, and changes when that changes. Each
object is a part of a process that is going on. The process produced it,
and the process will destroy it--nay, it is destroying it now, while we
look at it. We find, therefore, that things are not the true beings
which we thought them to be, but processes _are_ the reality. Science
takes this attitude, and studies out the history of each thing in its
rise and its disappearance, and it calls this history the truth. This
stage of thinking does not believe in _atoms_ or in _things_; it
believes in _forces_ and _processes_--"abstract ideas"--because they are
negative, and cannot be seen by the senses. This is the dynamic
stand-point in philosophy.

Reflection knows that these abstract ideas possess more truth, more
reality, than the "things" of sense-perception; the force is more real
than the thing, because it outlasts a thing,--it causes things to
originate, and to change, and disappear.

This stage of abstract ideas or of negative powers or forces finally
becomes convinced of the essential unity of all processes and of all
forces; it sets up the doctrine of the _correlation of forces_, and
believes that persistent force is the ultimate truth, the fundamental
reality of the world. This we may call a concrete idea, for it sets up a
principle which is the origin of all things and forces, and also the
destroyer of all things, and hence more real than the world of things
and forces; and because this idea, when carefully thought out, proves to
be the idea of self-determination--self-activity.

Persistent force, as taught us by the scientific men of our day, is the
sole ultimate principle, and as such it gives rise to all existence by
its self-activity, for there is nothing else for it to act upon. It
causes all origins, all changes, and all evanescence. It gives rise to
the particular forces--heat, light, electricity, magnetism, etc.--which
in their turn cause the evanescent forms which sense-perception sees as
"things."

We have described three phases:--

I. Sensuous Ideas perceive "things."
II. Abstract Ideas perceive "forces."
III. Concrete Idea perceives "persistent force."

In this progress from one phase of reflection to another, the intellect
advances to a deeper and truer reality[14] at each step.

Sense-ideas which look upon the world as a world of independent objects,
do not cognize the world truly. The