ABSTRACT
I have so far attempted to sketch what may be called the statics of bodies: the phenomenology of bodies as solid existences occupying space, and of the space they occupy, and which may very well exist unoccupied. Solid bodies have a privileged position in the phenomenal world: they provide the fixed points of reference in the phenomenological picture, around which the impalpable and fluid elements circulate, and to whose foursquare concreteness various types of entia rationis have their main moorings. Without some such fixed mooring-posts, there would be nothing for us to grasp, to lay hold of in the realm of phenomena: phenomena would involve nothing that we could busy ourselves with, make the object or theme of our consideration. Such considerability solid bodies have in virtue of their persistence, their maintenance of their existence, of their form and their character, all properties that will concern us in the present lecture, but they have it also in virtue of their hard exclusiveness coupled with close internal cohesion, and with their sheer separability, their frangibility or Sprödigkeit, to use Hegel's term, which carries their hard exclusiveness yet further. Solid bodies illustrate the side of mental life which Hegel called the ‘understanding’, and which is evident in all rigorous logical analyses, all separation of subject-matters into clear-edged elements or factors, alternatives, characters, etc., whose contribution can be separately assessed. Whatever is discussed in this manner, whether it be the Trinity or the psyche or the continuum of real numbers assumes a certain high-grade corporeality. Some would, in fact, regard this sort of corporeal thinking as the only thought worthy of the name, and, while we utterly question this opinion, we adhere to the view that it represents the foundation, the first steps of all thought worthy of the name, just as solid bodies are the foundation of the phenomenal104world. Solid bodies have, further, the capacity to appear in a variety of ways, all stamped with a reference to the point of view from which they appear, and with a vague index of angle and distance therefrom: even immediate contacts involve differences in side and sensitiveness. But solid bodies impress us as holding all this wealth of appearances together, and an infinity of further explorable appearances, in the various simple faces of their solidity: all this apparent variety, often highly unrepresentative, is given us as springing from a relatively small, unchanging nucleus to which with more or fess success we penetrate or dig down. The idea of this nucleus is also to be independent of and prior to the appearances in which it announces itself. All this is so complex and so profoundly interwoven, that it is only with great care that we can set it all forth and expound it connectedly, yet it is part and parcel of our most elementary experiences, presupposed throughout by every rudimentary exploration or manipulation. The simplicities that some philosophers treat as elements of this intertwined complexity are all artificially carved out of it and are not really its primitive building-stones.
