distinguished,
they cannot tell us how, from the whole system of Nature.

Of course, neither Thought nor Volition, as such, can be the absolute
Reality. They, like Physical Force, are but transmutations, affections,
phases of Reality. Nor, again, is Energy, as a quality, a correct
description of the Absolute, as such. The Absolute, as such, we cannot
describe; but in studying, as Physics does, the relations of physical
phenomena and stating these in terms of Reality, it conveniently gives
Reality a name appropriate to its own standpoint.

Metaphysics rightly declines to be required to study special branches of
Science. Nothing but grotesque absurdity ensues when this precaution is
overlooked. Yet Metaphysics has hitherto thought itself the better of a
little logic, and in the future it will have to grasp the scientific
conception of Reality. There is nothing else for it; and, after all, it
is remarkable how far the most fundamental conceptions of Metaphysics
are dependent on a physical origin.

Surely it is of primary importance to realise the effect upon our
conceptions of Space and Extension of the doctrine of the transmutations
of Energy. Even the profoundest metaphysicians have seemingly failed to
explain how Space, Matter, and Extension are related with Reality. You
cannot ignore this difficulty by saying that these are the working
conceptions of particular branches of Physical Science. But when you
realise that physical phenomena, even the most permanent and rigid, are
by scientific demonstration but transmutations of the real thing, you
may then understand that Space, Body, and Extension are but the laws and
conditions of the process. As appearances, and within the realm of
phenomena, they seem still what they have always seemed. So much we
still concede without diminution or obscurity; and at the same time we
can harmonise them as they could never be harmonised before with
postulated Reality.

It is the same with Time. The facts of memory would seem to imply that
there is no succession in the Absolute. We are always present at all
times of our life. In recollecting a past event we are contemplating no
mere image, but the actual past event itself. Our chronometry depends on
the annual motion of the Earth round the Sun. It has thus a purely
physical basis.

We might illustrate the application of the doctrine of Energy to every
department of Metaphysics. But such is not the object of the present
essay. We mer