Page:W. H. Chamberlin 1919, The Study of Philosophy.djvu/15

Rh do at times become interested in the latter, a mere accompaniment or aspect determined in us by his effort to express his meaning. We may become distinctly conscious of sound and other sensations, with their changing spatial, temporal, and causal relationships, and which the interests and efforts of another support in us. In case of complete inability to take in the meaning of another, as when we hear the speech of a foreigner, our interests would be commonly reduced to interests in such abstract aspects of their objective support. But the other person, the foreigner, would easily be recognized as a cooperating factor in the concrete whole.

Now when another speaks to us, while he is an essential factor in the objective support of the particular set of awarenesses to which he gives rise in us, we can clearly recognize other essential factors in the objective support of the experience. Vocal cords, the ear, the body, the air, and in general nature, are all essential cooperating factors in the full. concrete reality. We cannot understand our lives as parts of the world-whole until we consider these cooperating factors. All easily recognize the presence in our experience of the awareness of nature. "All recognize the existence of energies supporting in us this awareness of nature. A chief problem of philosophy is in regard to the fuller nature of these supporting energies.

We have already seen how an interest in our own mind or an interest in the life of another can support our other interests together with their awareness aspects. We have also noticed how other interests have two quite separate effects. They support an interest in the process of communication or mutual understanding, and then they support, unintentionally, a different type of interests, interests in the sensory forms of experience. These sensory forms are known to be supported by an energy which is the dynamic core of the interests of others. In nature however, these sensory forms, or material objects, are commonly thought of as supported by an impersonal energy.

From the fact, however, that material forms such as sound objects are known to be supported by the interests of other persons, interests which are at least as links of support confluent with and cooperating with these so-called impersonal energies, and from the further fact that all of the realities commonly accepted as concrete, understood, obvious, unquestioned, such as matter, time, space, forces, and energy, are, so far as we are aware of them, but abstract aspects of our interests, we may thoughtfully and confidently adopt the suggestion that the material forms and the energies of physical nature are, when more fully and concretely considered, but abstract aspects of the interests of a spiritual or personal reality whose interests, besides supporting our experience of nature and providing the energies in