6:8]

The conception of energy seems, indeed, to afford an exceptional
opportunity to naturalism. We have seen that the matter-motion theory
was satisfied to ignore, or regard as insoluble, problems concerning the
ultimate causes of things. Furthermore, as we shall presently see to
better advantage, the more strictly materialistic type of naturalism
must regard thought as an anomaly, and has no little difficulty with
life. But the conception of energy is more adaptable, and hence better
qualified to serve as a common denominator for various aspects of
experience. The very readiness with which we can picture the corpuscular
scheme is a source of embarrassment to the seeker after unity. That
which is so distinct is bristling with incompatibilities. The most
aggressive materialist hesitates to describe thought as a motion of
bodies in space. Energy, on the other hand, exacts little if anything
beyond the character of measurable power. Thought is at any rate in some
sense a power, and to some degree measurable. Recent discoveries of the
dependence of capacity for mental exertion upon physical vitality and
measurements of chemical energy received into the system as food, and
somehow exhausted by the activities of thought, have lent plausibility
to the hypothesis of a universal energy of which physical and
"psychical" processes are alike manifestations. And the conception of
energy seems capable not only of unifying nature, but also of satisfying
the metaphysical demand for an efficient and moving cause. This term,
like "force" and "power," is endowed with such a significance by common
sense. Indeed, naturalism would seem here to have swung round toward its
hylozoistic starting-point. The exponent of energetics, like the naive
animistic thinker, attributes to nature a power like that which he feels
welling up within himself. When he acts upon the environment, like meets
like. Energetics, it is true, may obtain a definite meaning for its
central conception from the measurable behavior of external bodies, and
a meaning that may be quite free from vitalism or teleology. But in his
extension of the conception the author of a philosophical energetics
abandons this strict meaning, and blends his thought even with a phase
of subjectivism, known as _panpsychism_.[238:9] This theory regards the
inward life of all nature as homogeneous with an immediately felt
activity or appetency, as energetics finds the inner life to be
homogeneous