- Sympathetic
Vibratory Physics - It's
a Musical Universe!
-
- Sketch of A Philosophy
- by
- Dr. John Gibson MacVicar, LL.D.,
D.D.
- first published Edinburgh, 1870.
-
- [EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is but a portion of
Macvicar's extensive work. There are other volumes available from
Delta Spectrum
Research. Keely's biographer Clara Bloomfield-Moore said:
"Although Macvicar and Keely differ in their theories of molecular
morphology, they agree entirely in calling the cosmical law of
sympathetic association of assimilation the watchword and the law
of creation."]
-
- Part I, II,
III,
IV.
-
- Introduction,
Part 1, Hint of Our Philosophy
- THE
COSMICAL LAW
- OF
SUBSTANCE
- OF
SPIRIT
- Introduction,
Part 2, Of Æther
- OF
MATTER
- THE PASSAGE
FROM THE MATERIAL TO THE SPIRITUAL
- THE
SEEMING CONFLICTS IN NATURE
- Preface, Mind and
Its Powers
- Postscript
- Chapter 1,
Part 1, Science and Philosophy
- Chapter 1, Part
2, Spencer, Spinoza
- Chapter 2,
Scientific Method
- Chapter
3, Part 1, Consciousness
- Chapter
3, Part 2, Self-Manifesting Power
- SELF-MANIFESTING-POWER
- SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
- ATTENTION.
GENIUS
- Chapter
3, Part 3, Perception, Intuition
- MEMORY.
IDEA
- IDEA
WITHOUT MEMORY
- PERSONALITY
- JOY
AND SADNESS
- SIGHT
AND FEELING
- OUR
THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
- Chapter
3, Part 4, Synthesis and Analysis
- SYNTHESIS,
ITS VALUE
- ANALYSIS,
ITS EVIL
- Chapter
3, Part 5, Antilogies of Consciousness
- ANALYSIS,
ITS GOOD
- Chapter
3, Part 6, Solution of the Antilogies
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 1, God
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 2, Creation
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 3, Cosmical Law
- Assimilation
- Individuation
- Unification
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 4, Finite Being
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 5, Part 1, Spirit
- Religious
Obligation
- Moral
Obligation
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 5, Part 2, Reason
- Idea
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 5, Part 3, Perception
- Subject and
Object
- Position and Space
- Time and Motion
- Sensationalism
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 5, Part 4, Epochs
- The
Mythological Epoch
- The Positive
Epoch
- The
Scientific Epoch
- Retention
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 5, Part 5,
Memory
- CONSECUTION
(LEIBNITZ). --- THE INDUCTIVE
JUDGMENT
- Abstraction and
Selective Attention
- Classification
- Generalization
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 5, Part 6, Syllogism
- Ideals and
Art
- Dogmatism,
Scepticism, and Mental Imbecility
- The Pure
Dialectic
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 5, Part 7, Reasoning
- Imagining
- Discovering
- Summary
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 6, Creation
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 7, The Universal Æther or Medium
of Light
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 8, Part 1, Material
World
- Inertia
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 8, Part 2, Gravitation
- Elasticity
- Molecules
- Symmetry -
Sphericity
- Molecular
Morphology
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 9, The Return from Material to
Spiritual
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 10, Part 1, Nature
- The Mineral
World
- The
Organic Elements
- The
Vegetable Kingdom
- The
Animal Kingdom
- The
Hepatic System
- The
Sketcher, Chapter 10, Part 2, The Myo-Neuro-cerebral
System
- Materialism
Wholly Inadequate
-
A HINT OF OUR
PHILOSOPHY.
-
- THE ACTUAL STATE OF SCIENCE,
UNSATISFACTORY.
-
-
- In the actual state of Science the phenomena of Nature and the
Laboratory have been classified to a great extent and referred to
as Laws. But these laws are very numerous; and this makes the
acquisition of Science very laborious. Most of them also rest
solely on an inductive or empyrical basis, they have been reached
merely by observation, they give no account of themselves to
Reason; and this places them in a very unsatisfactory position in
an intellectual point of view. It obliges the man of Science to
content himself with intellectual despair as the only kind of
intellectual repose which the actual state of Science allows
him.
- Is no further reduction of these laws possible? And if they
may be reduced in numbers, may not the ultimate laws or law
approve itself as a dictate of Reason?
-
- It cannot be denied that such a state of Science were in the
highest degree desirable. We are commonly told to despair of it.
But why should we? If the law of intellectual progress be admitted
generally, why should it be rejected here, and the misadventures
of the past be made the rule for the future? Of all theories in
connexion with Nature assuredly one of the most respectable is
that Nature is a Creation. Now if it be, there is no doubt that in
the mind of the Creator Nature is not a multiplicity of things as
it is in the actual Science of our day; there is no doubt, that
Nature is one grand Reality; and therefore possible the whole
action of Nature may be expressed by one all-embracing law.
Moreover if it be the creation of an Intelligence, and this is
implied in its being a creation, there must also be a sufficient
reason for everything in it. And why should we despair of finding
out the reasons of things so far at least as our intelligence
demands in order to its own well-being? It is surely more
legitimate to ascribe our still existing failures in finding
reasons for certain things to our still existing ignorance of that
which we may possibly know hereafter, than to any radical fault in
our intellect. Now such a fault would exist if all men tended to
ask that which cannot possibly be answered, and the best men
laboured to ascertain that which can never be known.
-
- It is now many years since the Author endeavoured to shew that
there is one general mode of action which when modified according
to circumstances gives all those varied modes of action which are
usually regarded as laws of Nature. But he did not then see the
reason of that law; and his views, thus incomplete, though printed
and placed in a few libraries for preservation, and no doubt
accessible to the curious, were not pressed upon the public and
are scarcely at all known. They have indeed sometimes been noticed
by the flying criticism of the day, but most frequently by writers
so ignorant of what they were criticizing that it was painful to
see a proper name in connexion with such nonsense.* The author has
therefore on this occasion taken care that contributors to the
"Gay Science" shall at least have looked into his work deeper than
the title-page in order to find the name of an author to whom they
may shew their superiority on the subject which he handles - a
subject to which he has devoted the leisure of a life-time - so
fruitlessly in a social point of view -- if this be all that
awaits him.
- But now along with an all-embracing law he is able to see the
reason of it. And having thus been enabled to complete the train
of thought in relation to it, and having found
-
- * As quite an exception to this, there must be entered here
the name of the Contemporary Review. That work, as in reference to
the subjects generally which it handles, speaks (July 1866) with
great intelligence as to the author's views and altogether in a
manner which he has found to be very gratifying and encouraging.
There may have been others also a philosophy which is of value to
himself he naturally desires to present it to others. He has good
evidence that there are a few, though at the present moment they
may be but a few, who are deply dissatisfied with the shallowness
of that which is only popularly admired as Science, and who are
thirsting for a view of Nature which shall both in its application
be more adequate to explain phenomena, and in itself more profound
and soul-satisfying. It is for these in the meantime that he
publishes his results; for others hereafter.
-
- THE COSMICAL
LAW.
-
-
- The cosmical or all-embracing law referred to has been named
from that operation of it which is most important to us, that by
which our organisation is reintegrated and our energy maintained
from hour to hour, namely, Assimilation. And the reason of it
appears on our considering the consequences of that view of Nature
which has been already alluded to, namely that Nature is the
creation of an All-sufficient Creator - a view which may certainly
be characterized as the most natural as well as the most
respectable, since it comes most spontaneously to every one and
has been most generally held by the most reflective minds of all
ages.
-
- From this relation it results that nothing which is quite new
in creation is possible; for in the Creator himself all fullness
dwells from all eternity. Whatever is not self-contradictory or
self-destructive is already anticipated and has already a place in
the Divine Mind, either as knowing or as being. In the Divine Mind
there is already the archtype of every thing that is possible.
Moreover it is incredible that an Almighty Creator should award
existence to anything which should not be an expression of His
will, anything which should not be responsive to Him and a
manifestation of Him. In a word the creation cannot be but a
mirror which shall reflect, or a luminary which shall radiate, or
a treasury which shall dispense the wealth and the glory of the
Infinite. Hence in its Being and its action every created thing,
and all creation as one thing, must be assimilated and
assimilative. In fine Assimilation must be the watch-word and the
law of the creation.
-
- Hence also we are enabled at once to see that the creation
must be, as it is found to be, a Cosmos; for it is the prescript
of a perfect Intelligence in whom the love of order cannot but be
supreme.
-
- Cosmical Law then at the fountain-head is One only.
-
- But the various breaks in knowledge commonly called branches
of Science, which our intellectual weakness and the shortness of
life necessitate, render it convenient to have a number of laws to
refer to rather than one only. For if one only it might often seem
unrelated to the phenomena to be explained and demand many words
to connect it with them. Let us therefore here resolve our
all-embracing law into three and these in two sets. And let us
express them in terms which are applicable to material Nature to
which alone the following pages are devoted. The two sets take
their rise in the twofold fact that the finite assimilates itself
on the one hand to the Infinite, and on the other hand to
itself.
-
- I. From the assimilation of the finite to the Infinite we
obtain The Law of Diffusion or Expansion on the one hand and
The Law of Individuation or Condensation on the other, and as
their harmonized product in the material economy The Law of the
Perfect in Form (symmetry culminating in Sphericity).
-
- II. From the assimilation of finite objects each to itself
and all to each other, we obtain The Law of the Permanence of
the Properties of Matter and The Law of Types or Species on the
one hand, and the phenomena of affinity and transformation and
The Law of Generic Resemblance on the other. And as their
harmonized product we obtain The Law of the conservation of
Energy. Of all of these, continual illustration will occur as
we proceed and they need not be dwelt upon here.
-
- OF
SUBSTANCE.
-
-
- What now as to Being or Reality which is the postulate of all
thought and which our cosmical law of assimilation requires us to
ascribe to the creation if we ascribe it to the Creator? Are there
between sixty and seventy different kinds even of material
substance alone, and in this small planet of ours alone, not to
speak of spiritual Beings which are greatly out of favour in the
present day, or of æther, the claims of which to the award
of existence are in a better way now than they were during the
last century? In a word is created substance of many kinds which
differ from each other in their very grounds? Or when viewed
ultimately and in its ground is there but one kind of created
substance only? Our cosmical law suggests that as the Creator
Himself is only one in substance so also will the creation be to
which he awards existence. And here Iet it not be immediately
inferred that the extreme simplicity of this deduction, made as it
is in the face of all the variety and multiplicity of
individualized objects that there are in the Universe, will
necessarily involve us in difficulties. Different Beings whether
classes or individuals are known to us not by any difference in
their substance but only by differences in their attributes. And
since Being or Substance and Power or Potentiality differ from
each other only in conception, only as the statical differs from
the dynamical, it is reasonable, nay in the circumstances it is
alone legitimate to suppose that it is not in virtue of some
absolute difference in substance (for none appears) but only from
differences in the quantity or intensity of substance or power in
the individual that different individuals display such different
potentialities or endowments as they do display, and come to be
justly classified as they are into various orders of Beings. What
the best classification of these various orders may be, we who are
confined to a small planet with a small orbit in the heavens are
not in a good position to determine. But there are three which
present themselves on all hands as very distinctly marked and
which viewed in the aggregate are The Spiritual, The
Ætherial, and The Material.
-
- OF
SPIRIT.
-
-
- Which of these three orders of Being are we to take as the
type, as that in constituting which finite Being culminates and
justifies its own existence though finite and therefore
necessarily imperfect? This question is not more distinctly
answered by the voice of intelligence which is the highest of all
than it is by our cosmical law. For in as much as the Author of
all is Himself a spiritual Being that law leads us to expect that
the type of created Being shall be spirit also. Nor can Being in
any object be so attenuated or so far removed from Him who filleth
all in all, but it must surely still retain an aura of the
spiritual nature.
-
- This inference as to the typical character of Spirit in the
Cosmos may be otherwise put thus. An individualized Being is a
Spirit when by the preservation of a true unity in his Being
notwithstanding its quantity, the intensity or energy of Being
which he possesses is such as to impart to him self-directive
power instead of the power of resting merely when he rests or of
driving merely as he is driven, that is, when it is such as to
impart to him the vis voluntatis instead of the vis inertiæ,
and along with this, perception and memory and desire and
aversion, instead of a blind receptivity of special impressions
only and mere atavism with attraction and repulsion. Since then
the Creator is infinite in (the energy or intensity of) his Being
and is truly One, creation in obeying the law of assimilation is
to be expected to be either wholly a spirit-world from the first,
or if otherwise, to tend continually in that direction.
-
- As to the mental powers and capacities of spirits by which
they are so fully differentiated from all other orders of finite
Being whether material or ætherial it has been shewn in the
first part of this work that, with the exception of that
autokinetic action which is the characteristic of spirit, they are
all phenomena of Assimilation, now to the Creator giving Reason,
now to self giving Consciousness, now to the world giving
Perception and Memory --- the very term "idea" which has been
consecrated from a remote antiquity as most proper to the
phenomena of the spiritual world meaning "an assimilation".
-
- We have conceived the existence of an universe consisting
solely of spiritual Beings. Now such a conception carries with it
an answer to the question in Theodicy why a Being who is
absolutely perfect in Himself should award existence, as we see
that He has done, to that which being finite cannot but be
imperfect; for spiritual Beings are the proper subject of
enjoyment; and assuredly enjoyment is such an excellence that it
is a warrant for existence; and an increase of enjoyment if it be
possible is a warrant for creation. But however absolute the
fulness of the Infinite, and however perfect His own enjoyment or
ever-blessedness, still such is the nature of enjoyment that while
One only exists One only can enjoy. By a creation on the other
hand of sentient creatures whose wellbeing shall imply enjoyment,
these creatures being placed in circumstances favourable to their
wellbeing, enjoyment may be multiplied without end.
-
-
OF ÆTHER.
-
-
- Theodicy and our Theory therefore equally suggest a creation
which shall consist wholly of spiritual, psychical or sentient
Beings. But such an universe , it appears not obscurily, could not
exist under universal assimilation as the cosmical law. For among
the attributes of the Infinite there is not only Unity, there is
also immensity. His Being and power are everywhere present. Under
the influence of the divine Immensity then finite Being under the
law of assimilation must tend to be diffused and to be found in
space to the utmost degree possible. It must tend to be everywhere
present. Now this it can be, since it is finite, only by being
partitioned into the smallest unities of which it is capable.
Moreover in being so partitioned it may also obey the law of
assimilation in respect of the Unity of the Creator, for each
element may itself be an unity.
-
- It is further to be remarked that these diffused elements
being all attenuated to the last degree that is possible to finite
substance must all be identical with each other, except in the
relative position in space which each occupies. And in this
respect as well as in the quantity or intensity of Being in the
individual the ætherial world which we are now considering
must differ completely from the world of Spirits. With regard to
the latter nothing appears to present the individuals which
constitute it from possessing different quantities or powers.
Nothing appears to prevent the spiritual world from being a
Hierarchy. But the individuals or elements in the world of
æther must be everywhere identical.
-
- As to their self-assimitative action it must be next to
nothing. But, for the same reason, it is important to remark, that
the medium as a whole must be eminently suited for assimilating
itself to other Beings and things that are placed in it. It must
therefore be eminently suited for representing and for reporting
these Beings and things to each other with perfect truth. It must
also for the same reason be most fully dependent on the Creator
and suited for manifesting Him as He is. And are not these
anticipation fully verified by the phenomena of that medium which
is the medium of vision, of light and colours, the realm of all
visible beauty and glory?
-
- Nor should we stop here were we to enter upon the subject in
detail. In that case we might shew that while the æther aims
at assimilating itself by its universal diffusion to the Immensity
of the Creator, it aims also by its mode of action at assimilating
itself to His Eternity; for eternity is not as we are somnolently
apt to suppose a beginningless and endless thread of time extended
in a line. Eternity is all time wound up in one; it is an abiding
simultaneousness, and its first finite manifestation is a maximum
velocity. And thus instead of the existing physical explanations,
all of which have hitherto been complete failures, we obtain at
least a metaphysical explanation, of the simultaneousness of
universal attraction and the extreme velocity of light
&c.
-
- OF
MATTER.
-
-
- But enough and more than enough it will be said of the
Spiritual world and the Universal æther, both of which are
often regarded as of questionable existence. What of the Material
world it will be asked --- that world which to the men of science
of our day is every thing. To this we reply that in our philosophy
the material world far from being the whole universe as is
popularly maintained is merely an incident in it, a very beautiful
as well as a very vast creation no doubt, but still only of the
nature of a beautiful cloud-work or precipitate in the universal
æther.
-
- Assuming the ætherial to which we suppose the Creator to
have awarded existence to be proceeding towards the spiritual in a
non-miraculous way, it appears that the material element must
present itself in the first instance, instead of the spiritual.
This the inexorable conditions of geometry appear to demand. Nor
let it be hastily inferred that in affirming this we are affirming
limits to almighty power. For the first forthputting of almighty
power must consist in lighting up itself with perfect
intelligence, and geometry is merely intelligence conceiving the
relations of finite portions of something when occupying finite
portions of space. But hence, in the redemption of Being from its
most diffused and attenuated and wholly apathetic state to a state
in which sensibility may be restored, it appears that the
ætherial elements in the first instance must aggregate and
unify into an order of individualities or elements in each of
which the quantity or intensity of Being is still too small to
have recovered and to be able to manifest autokinetic power or
spiritual endowment of any kind. For the evidence of this Chapters
III and IV of Book I of the work now in the Reader's hand may be
consulted. We are indeed to expect in the individuals of this new
order of Beings, (in as much as there is more substance in each,)
more individuality and higher powers than there are in the
ætherial element. Instead of being capable of assimilating
itself to other Beings and things merely as to motion and rest,
which is all that the ætherial element can do, we are to
expect that this new element shall be able to assimilate itself to
itself in these respect also, that is, to rest as it rests and to
drive as it is driven. We are also to expect in it phenomena which
shall be reminiscences and anticipations of spiritual endowments
such as are preception and memory, desire and aversion, we are to
expect in it, for instance, a receptivity of the action of other
things upon it, redintegration of former states, attraction and
repulsion. Now these anticipations are realized in the material
element.
-
-
- THE PASSAGE FROM THE
MATERIAL TO THE SPIRITUAL.
-
-
- Thus as soon as the Infinite comes into relation with the
finite, as soon as immensity and eternity manitest themselves in
terms of space and time it looks as if by the intrusion of the
material element, a barrier were to be thrown up which would
prevent access to the realm of spirits beyond, and put a stop to
their creation in a non-miraculous way. But it soon appears that
there is no danger of this. The material element makes its
apparition in nature in virtue of the unifying or synthetic action
that is implied in the cosmical law of Assimilation. But that
action cannot and does not terminate here. Nor can we legitimately
assign a limit to it until synthetic action in the cosmos has
proved itself coordinate in intensity with analytic action. We
must look for effect of a synthetic action as perfect as those of
the analytic action as perfect as those of the analytic action.
And since the analytic action partitions completely Being or
substance ultimately into the smallest individualities of which
Being as such admits (the ætherial elements), we must look
in the cosmos for a synthetic action which shall unify completely
again these minima into new individualities ultimately of the
greatest power, which the individualism of the adjacent
individuals permits.
- What response then let us ask do we actually find in Nature to
such a conclusion? To this it is to be answered that we
undoubtedly find the synthetic action of Nature subsequently to
the genesis of the Material out of the Ætherial element
going on with unabated energy; and we are warranted by the
contemplation of Nature no less than by our theory to look for
effects of synthetic action as perfect as those of analytic
action. Now nowhere within the compass of the purely material
sphere do we find the production of perfect unities. Such is the
self-conservative power of the material elements that when they
unite they unite by juxta-position only, and nothing results but a
molecular structure, a sturcture which can be taken to pieces
again. And we are not authorized either by mechanics, dynamics,
chemistry or any other branch of science to ascribe to any merely
molecular aggregate, whatever its mass or structure, phenomena of
quite another order than those which are truly mechanical or
chemical. Assuredly we are not authorized to ascribe to it thought
and feeling.
-
- Put the course of molecular synthesis into its meaning. Thus
having prepared for itself in the mineral kingdom a ground to
stand upon Synthesis marches onwards through the vegetable to the
animal kingdom, which by universal consent culminates in our
planet in Man. Now any animal and specially man considered as a
molecular structure merely, may be justly described as a
myo-neuro-cerebral apparatus with its accessories to give
nourishment, support, protection &c. Moreover in this organic
apparatus which unhappily no shorter name than which has been
given can characterize as an unity (which it is), and in which
molecular synthesis in our planet culminates we also see analysis
culminating. The muscular system which in its peripheral part is
the triumph of synthesis or structure. The brain which is its
central part is the triumph of analysis or volume, under the
condition that the result shall still be concrete. The brain
consists of elements the atomic weight of none of which exceeds a
low number, and they are kept far apart by means of hydrogen. And
as might be expected in these circumstances it is so tender that
of all the products of material nature it is the first to
decompose after it has ceased to live.
-
- And now what as to use? That of the muscular system is
obvious. It is to move a system of fulcra and levers and so to
effect motion. But what as to the brain? With a view to discover
this we may remark in the first place that it is the centre of the
entire animated system, every particular muscle and the whole
periphery being connected with it, and the action of all led into
it by innumerable conducting threads of the same nature as itself.
We may safely infer therefore that the brain must be a focus of
action of great force, and that force primarily in so far as its
environments are concerned, centripetal. In the second place we
may remark that compared with what it might have been (but for
analysis culminating in it) the brain is very voluminous, and its
value obviously depends in great measure on its volume. Now this
fact taken in connexion with its highly analysed and readily
disintegrating structure seems at first sight strange. But it
ceases to be so when we call to mind that in the very degree that
it ceases to be a dense mass of heavy molecular matter while yet
it is a molecular structure it comes to be a volume of
individualized æther. The brain commonly so considered with
its fibres and ganglions is according to our view merely a support
or skeleton to a large unified volume of a hyaline, invisible,
pmponderable substance, which however secure it may be of escaping
detection by the eye or the balance is yet there, and is such that
according to our philosophy it may be expected to fulfil a most
important function in nature.
-
- Here in fact we have a repetition on a great scale, and by the
use of the material element as the instrument, of that aggregation
of ætherial elements in the celestial spaces, from the
centripetal action of which we infer (Chap. III) their perfect
synthesis or unification by confluence in a definite small number,
and the consequent giving to Nature of a new order of Being,
namely, the material element. In this repetition then of the same
structure on a much grander scale in the brain, what are we to
expect but the perfect synthesis or unification by confluence of
ætherial elements again in vast numbers in that organ into a
new order of Being transcending the Material? But if so what we
obtain can be nothing else but a psychian or spiritual Being,
according as the synthetic force of the myo-neuro-cerebral organ
which is its mother and nurse, is less or greater --- an organ
which may obviously be of on less value to its inhabitant, when
its efferent or centrifugal action has commenced, for it must
serve as an apparatus to it for communicating with its
environments, and for placing itself in a relationship of
well-being and of well-doing in the world.
-
- Grant this coordination of the synthetic with the analytic
force in nature, and our conception of a Cosmos is complete. The
power-loom provided by the Creator for weaving the beautiful web
of Nature is perfect. The material system which threatened at
first to put a stop to the multiplication of spiritual Beings
altogether is converted into an apparatus most productive of
sentient Beings in all varieties that are capable of enjoying
their existence until the soul of man is reached --- the soul of
man which is not only alive to enjoyment like every sentient
nature, but which can also compass self-originated or God-like
action. And thus the all-important truth of the immortality of the
feeling and thinking principle in man is no longer left as a tenet
needing to be held by faith in opposition to the indications of
modern science. It is on the contrary placed in the position of
that truth towards which all science culminates.
-
- THE SEEMING
CONFLICTS IN NATURE.
-
-
- Since the Cosmos is finite and the condition of its existence
(the cosmical law of assimilation) calls upon it to imitate, even
to the impossible undertaking of emulating, the infinite a seeming
conflict in many respects must be unavoidable. Thus the Infinite
is at once absolute Unity and absolute Immensity. Now of this the
finite conception is that of two opposite extremes neither of
which can be reached, one extreme all development and expansion,
the other all contraction and concentration. Hence Nature is all
in motion in opposite directions, and often seems to conflict with
herself. That this is a seeming only might however be inferred
from the fact that all these movements originate in one and the
same idea, obey one and the same law (assimilation) and aim at one
and the same end. Accordingly it forms one of the integral parts
of the Philosophy of the inimitable Leibnitz that they never
frustrate or extinguish each other, and that the same amount of
energy is always conserved in the cosmos --- a principle which is
now generally admitted, and of which one hears much as a discovery
of our own day.
- But the incompetence of that which is finite to assimilate
itself to that which is at once absolute Unity and absolute
Immensity is not the only ground of seeming conflict in Nature.
The Author of all is also at once Immutable and Everliving. And
hence phenomena in the creation when assimilating itself to the
Creator in this respect, which are in their seeming at least still
more difficult to resolve. Hence the stability for ages of the
crystal on the one hand, and the changefulness from hour to hour
of the sentient creature on the other, and that not merely as
matter of fact, but as the conditions of its well-being; for
normal changefulness accomplishing itself without effort in a
sentient nature affects the sensibility of that creature as
enjoyment. But such changefulness is the abolition or the
destruction of stability. It is therefore opposed to mechanical
excellence. Is then the conflict between the truly vital and the
excellently mechanical both real and insuperable? If so then
perennial enjoyment can only be secured in the spirit world into
which the merely mechanical does not enter at all.
-
- But let us not on that account disparage the mechanical, the
material. Can there possibly be enjoyment, at least such enjoyment
as is known to us, without the knowledge of its opposite
correlative, without the conception at least if not the experience
of suffering? It would seem that there cannot. But if so, then the
material world instead of merely coming in the way of the
spiritual world as a barrier (the point of view in which it
presented itself to us at first) implying as it does a discipline
in suffering, may even be necessary to that in virtue of which
alone spirit possesses value. Doubtless the conflict here also is
only seeming. And so in all cases if they really be part of the
economy of Creation, and not products of finite wills. Doubtless
in reality and in His own thought the supreme Intelligence of the
Great Creator sees harmony only. And possibly the same joy may be
n reserve for us also when Science shall have been perfected.
-
- But here as a ground for setting aside our entire philosophy
it may be said that these objecdtive conflicts be they all seeming
only or be they all real, are no discouragements to speculative
philosophy, compared with those subjective conflicts which take
their rise in Reason itself, since Reason when venturing on such
cosmological ideas as enter largely in such philosophy does not
scruple to affirm with equal confidence conclusions which are
directly contradictory of each other. This is a very serious
consideration. But it has received what to us is a satisfactory
solution in our Ist Part (On Mind, its Powers and Capacities).
These contradictory conclusions, it has there been shewn, instead
of being antinomies of Reason (though the admirable Kant regarded
them as such) are only antilogies of consciousness, that is,
phenomena of perceptivity not pure and simple, but modified (and
generally maltreated) by the presence along with it in the same
mind of a personal activity which in itself has no law but that of
liberty, and which therefore is always bent on denying, because it
finds that all belief binds, and therefore limits the exercise of
liberty.
-
MIND AND ITS
POWERS
-
- P R E F A C E.
-
- One commonly likes to get a glance, if he can, at a new book,
before he commits himself to its purchase or perusal. This,
therefore, the author has attempted to give the reader in the
Analytical Contents which immediately follow - not without the
hope that he will be so much interested by the new aspect in which
old beliefs are presented to him, as to feel disposed to dip into
the work itself. Even from these contents it may be gathered that
the author propounds "A Philosophy" - meaning, by this term, a
cycle of thought descriptive, in an orderly manner, of what is
held to be Reality, in which everything that is cognizable has its
own place, and in which everything that is introduced, while it
stands in the last analysis on a solid basis, proves also to be
harmonious with its antecedents, its concomitants, and its
consequences, or, in other words, is explained and justified by
them.
-
- It is through Part II, which treats of the chemistry of
nature, that the author wishes that he could have recommended this
Part I. to the reader's consideration; for it is part and parcel
of the same train of thought, and he conceives that in it, such
arithmetical and geometrical verification have been adduced, as
must ultimately convince every one, that the views there advanced
represent molecular nature, or are at any rate such, that
molecular nature is most articulately and loudly responsive to
them. But the author dare not hope, even though it really
possessed all the merits which he ascribes to it, that Part II.
can be much attended to, or can make much way in the scientific
world for years to come; for he cannot conceal from himself that
it is as antithetic to existing hypotheses in chemistry, as the
Newtonian System was at its first publication to the vortices of
Des Cartes. Nor can he deny that it professes to make a greater
step in science than has been made since those days; for it
professes to give the forms and structures of the various atoms
and molecules which constitute chemical substances, and thus to
raise chemistry to the level, and bring it within the sphere, of
mechanics, investing its objects, at the same time, with all the
distinctness of the objects of other branches of natural science.
Now, it would be contrary to the teaching of the whole history of
science, if such pretensions (however well founded) were attended
to, or admitted, till after long years, first of neglect and then
of resistance. Parte I., "The Philosophy of Mind," must therefore
stand, in the meantime, on its own merits. It too has, indeed, the
misfortune of presenting itself in direct opposition to the
prevalent tastes of the day; and therefore it too will be
extensively repudiated at any rate at the present moment, and
until the now rising tide of materialism and pantheism shall have
fallen into the ebb again, as after having reached the full it has
so often done already, before the constitutional instincts or
inspirations of humanity with which speculative minds may indeed
dally for a generation, but which are ultimately inexorable.
- Meantime, to those who, still standing firmly on their feet,
as true men actuated by the principles referred to, are not to be
carried away by the flowing tide - to those, in a word, who still
hold to the worship of God, the duty of self-sacrifice for the
good of others, and the belief in immortality, - what follows may
serve to show that, in believing and in acting as they do, they
are standing on ground which is truly scientific, and have nothing
to fear from the progress of thought, in so far as it is entitled
to the name of scientific - nay, are in a position to lead the way
in all that can be justly so called.
-
- The Manse, Moffat,
- Dumfriesshire
-
POSTSCRIPT .
-
- This sketch of a Philosophy is now brought to a close, and
that not without pleasing prospects as to the future of Science.
Since 1868, when Part II., which related to molecular
construction, was printed in Germany, there has been a notable
progress of philosophy in the same direction. The
spectrum-analysis of star-light emanating from sources differing
greatly as to the degree of heat which actuates them, or the state
of diffusion and attenuation in the matter of which they consist,
has forced on the minds of chemists the very reasonable suspicion
that cosmical force, acting out in the great universe since the
beginning of time on the same particles of matter, may be capable
of doing something more in the way of ultimate analysis than the
chemist in his laboratory with his small experiments. In
consideration of the growing simplicity which seems to
characterize the light-giving elements of different heavenly
bodies according as they are on the way to greater attenuation
through heat or are already extremely attenuated, the idea begins
to be tolerated even by experimental chemists, that of the 63
so-called simple substances only a very few, perhaps only one, can
survive without decomposition that ordeal of molecular
transformation which is the very secret of all the variety, the
harmony, the beauty of nature.
-
- On comparing the data of the spectroscope with our molecular
synthesis, it will be seen that those substances which ocular
vision gives the astronomer as the last survivors under extreme
cosmical analysis are the same as those which mental vision has
given us under our method as the most simple, stable, and
recurrent of molecular structures, viz., two lighter than
hydrogen, nitrogen or azote (which in our theory is secularly
resolvable into hydro-carbon; 2 Az = C4H4 = olefiant gas),
magnesium, sodium, iron, &c.
-
- Chemists are still indeed content with their formless,
structureless, phantom atoms, instead of particles looking like
reality, having distinctly conceived forms and structures; they
are content with mere abstraction, such as atomicity and affinity,
instead of well-understood reasons and mechanical causes! But
surely chemistry as it now exists must soon become tired of
itself. Surely it cannot be long before earnest minds who have
youth and energy will make a rush into the light. As to others, it
must not be forgotten that death usually supervenes before even
demonstration can wholly change a long-cherished habit of thought.
It was more than a generation - upwards of 30 years - after the
publication of "before the philosophy of Newton was presented to
the University of Cambridge, and even then by stealth, under the
protection of the philosophy of Des Cartes, which was still
taught! Moreover, the perpetual secretary of The Academy of
Science in Paris, living in and its historian, a man of genius,
and an admirer of Newton, 70 years after the publication of "The
Principia," still maintained the Cartesian astronomy, and died in
that belief, though he lived to his hundredth year! Happy the man
who by his own researches has been able to satisfy the demands of
his own reason and to make silence in his own heart.
-
CHAPTER I.
-
- ON THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE
SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND PHILOSOPHY PROPERLY SO
CALLED.
-
-
- In the rising science of the day it is maintained by our most
popular authors and lecturers that the "physical forces"-taken in
the singular number, physical force-is the las word, the ultimate
principle, which science can legitimately pronounce.
- The physical forces are represented, not as the fingers of
God, which they are, but as all that there is for God.
-
- Power and Eternity, which have hitherto been generally held to
be attributes of God, are now regarded as attributes of a definite
amount of merely dynamic energy which, it is maintained,
constitutes the whole universe of being.
-
- The most exquisite object in nature-the lily, the rose, the
bee, the dove, the peacock, the horse, man himself-are now looked
to merely in relation to their material environments, and the
incident forces which are supposed to have produced them. All
growth and development, all organs and limbs, are regarded merely
as inevitable extrusions in the direction of least
resistance.
- The idea of antecedent design, either in reference to nature
as a whole or in reference to any object in particular, is dropped
as unscientific or repudiated as unsound; in short, a reference to
the physical forces is the last word permitted in any treatise, if
that treatise is to be admitted as possessing a scientific
character. Or; if there be one word more, it is only the
"correlation" of these same physical forces, and their
"conservation" or persistence eternally in the same amount of
energy in the universe.
- And let it be fully granted that, in their own place and
within their own sphere, these are physical truths which are of
the greatest value. As to the forms (the correlation of the
physical forces), it is a wholesome relapse into the old
philosophy of nature, a reduction to unity again of agencies which
had lately been regarded as many, but long ago as one only. And as
to the latter(the conservation of energy), it is also a return to
a view of things which is more sound than that which was popular
before the doctrine of conservation was revived, or indeed at the
epoch of the revival of philosophy in modern times. Thus at that
epoch, Des Cartes went the length of maintaining that there was a
conservation of motion in the universe.* This, Newton demonstrated
to be a mistake.+ Then came Leibnitz, who, as usual, adjusted the
truth between these two great men, and he showed that it was not
motion, but the possibility or means of motion-in one word,
energy-that was conserved in the universe. In many parts of his
works this philosopher maintains this doctrine, and very
distinctly in the following note added to his fifth reply to Dr S.
Clarke, which was indeed among the last things he ever wrote:-"Je
n'entreprends pas ici d'etablir ma DYNAMIQUE, ou ma doctrine des
FORCES: ce \lieu n'y seroit point propre. Cependant je puis fort
bien repondre a l'objection qu'on me fait ici. J'avois sountenu
que les FORCES ACTIVES se conservent dans le monde (Voyez la note
sur le 13 de la Troisieme Replique de Mr Clarke). On m'objecte que
deux corps mous, on non elastique concourant entre eux perdent de
leur force. Je reponds que non. Il est vrai que les touts la
perdent par rapport a leur mouvement total; mais les parties la
recoivent, etant agitees interieurement par la force du concours.
Ainsi ce defaut n'arrive qu'en apparence. Les forces ne sont pas
detruites mais dissipees parmi les parties menues. Ce n'est pas
les perdre, mais c'est faire comme font ceux qui changent la
grosswe monnoye en petite. Je demeure point la meme, et en cela
j'approuve ce qui se dit pag 341, de l'optique de Mr Newton qu'on
cite ici. Mais j'ai montre alleurs, qu'il y a de la difference
entre la quantite de mouvement et la quantite de force."++ Thus
our modern physicists, writing on this subject, have, to adopt his
own figure, only given us change for Leibnitz's notes.
-
- If it be said that, in the above words, Leibnitz does not
state that one of the principal forms of the incident force, when
dissipated in bodies on their collision, is heat, which is known
now to be the fact, or that perhaps he did not know that heat was
a mode of motion at all, the answer is, that it was never doubted
by any philosopher of that epoch that heat was a mode of motion.
And in the following words of Leibnitz have we not the most
approved view of the nature of heat and its relation to light as
definitely expressed as it is in any modern work?-"Caloris eadem
est caussa, quae lucis, solo subtilitatis discrimine, utrumque et
oritur a motu intestino in se redeunte subtiliora sui ejaculante,
et eum facit."*
-
- But the claim to original discovery in our day of the
conservation of energy would be but a small evil if the idea were
not at the same time carried a' l'outrance. In itself the doctrine
amounts to nothing more than this, that inasmuch as every ultimate
atom of matter is perfectly elastic, so is the whole universe of
atoms perfectly elastic. Hence it is a doctrine which cannot be
legitimately extended beyond the merely material sphere, except on
the assumption that matter is the only reality, and that there is
no such thing as a spiritual world at all - an assumption which is
one of the boldest, and which, however often it may have been
made, has always served only to awake a prevailing voice to the
contrary, and the firm vote of a large majority to the effect that
mind exists as well as matter, and is prior in the order of
existence to matter.
-
- What would the great Leibnitz, the discoverer of the principle
of the conservation of energy, have thought had he met in the
writings of any man of science who had adopted that principle,
such words as these, "A miracle is strictly defined as a violation
of the law of the conservation of energy" - prayer also, on the
same ground, declared to be objectively impotent, and good only as
a mental discipline; nay, the act itself of prayer "probably be
found to illustrate that law (the conservation of energy!) in its
ultimate expansion."+
-
- The truth is, that the most popular science of our day viewing
universal existence as a mechanical dynamism merely, and all
mental phenomena as of the nature of echoes merely, just as
Spinoza did, but setting out at the other end from that at which
he set out, that is, adopting not reason, but the external senses,
as the only informers of the mind-the most popular science of the
day is merely spelling out for itself Spinozism backwards, and, as
might be expected, is breaking down half-way, and falling into a
Naturalism or Pancosmism, which is fraught with all the evils, and
has none of the intellectual charms of the exquisitely systematic
construction of the philosopher of Amsterdam, a construction such,
that if you grant his premises, or rather indeed his single
premis,* the whole comes out with scarcely less
[continuity] and beauty than the six books of Euclid.
-
- The logical charm of the Ethics, it must be admitted by all,
is intense; but when regarded in a higher point of view than the
merely logical, that charm is not unsullied. Spinoza often makes
use of language for which, in its true meaning, there is no place
in his system. In that system he utterly ignores, and in fact
destroys, all that is understood by personality equally in God and
man; yet in writing out that system, he so respected the
personality of his readers that he admits, nay assigns, a most
eminent place to the love of God, to liberty, to human merit, and
to the immortality of the good man. But, for none of these things
in his system, considered as a logical construction, is there any
place at all. The author is generally admired for his boldness of
denial and his honesty of mind. Be it so. It is no less certain
that he has spread a net-not designedly perhaps, but in point of
fact-a net, of which the material consists in the constant use of
terms which are so venerable in the regard of all men that the
reader is apt to be caught before he is aware, and to fail to
discover till it be too late that these much-loved terms, when
worked into the meshes of the author's system, have been entirely
emptied of all their meaning, all that meaning in virtue of which
humanity has always regarded them as sacred.
-
- It is not in modern times, nor is it in Europe or the West-it
was many ages ago, and in the East, that there was developed, in
all logical simplicity and purity, the Pantheism which Spinoza
clothed in language that does not belong to it, and which the
science that is rising into popularity amongst us now is uttering
again in broken syllables. Such is Buddhism. The cosmology and the
physics attached to that system are indeed absurd enough; but
these absurdities are merely imported into Buddhism from other
systems. They form no part of the special teaching of Buddhu
himself. Buddhu, in fact, discountenanced all such inquiries, and,
like Socrates, maintained that Ethics alone was worthy of
study.
- And here let us state, though in a few words, and in
occidental terms and conceptions, this Oriental Pantheism, as I
have myself learned it from the lips of Buddhist priests in Asia,
and as it exists as a living creed; for Buddhism is the type
towards which much of western thought is now tending.
-
- 1. There exists from all eternity an universe which
develops into all that occurs; and all that occurs recurs in
cycles of inconceivably long periods, so that, regarded in the
largest point of view, uniformity rules throughout the universe
through all eternity.
-
- 2. The universe is instinct with life; and life in various
orders of beings, and most eminently in man, effloresces into
intelligence.
-
- 3. Man, when he has attained to the perfection of his
nature (a Buddhu), is the most divine of all beings, and the
proper object of adoration-himself if he be still alive, his
memory if he be gone.
-
- 4. While some(the priesthood) ought to devote their lives
to aiming at this perfection, and meantime are worthy of
adoration for doing so, all men ought to their utmost to
cultivate humanity, and to practise it in their lives.
-
- Here we have a pure Pantheism unmixed with ideas borrowed from
other systems. There is no attempt here, as there is in the work
of Spinoza, to satisfy the religiously disposed; and accordingly,
when such persons appear in Buddhist families, they have recourse
to some more positive religion. Influenced by their inner
darkness, or light, or their surroundings, they became demon
worshipers as well as Buddhists, or worshipers of the gods of the
Hindu, or Christians, all which the Buddhist priest wisely
permits, knowing the necessity of such a step in order in any
measure to satisfy the religious consciousness of man. And so far
so well; for nothing seems to be so killing to all the higher
attributes of humanity as Atheism. And in the very proportion that
Buddhism is more consequent and logically pure than Spinozism, it
is more destructive of all earnestness of character, all power of
believing and of practising the morality which it sets forth. Thus
the Buddhist nations in the present day, inasmuch as they are the
mentally enfeebled offspring of a hereditary Atheism, are
generally indisposed, if not wholly incapable, of having a strong
faith in any one, or in anything. They have become merely the
creatures of a long-established conventionalism, to change which
in any particular, seems to them as much as their life is worth.
Custom, which in all men tends to become a second nature, is to
them all the nature they have.
-
- Those who are acquainted with the ultimate views of Auguste
Comte, the author of the "Systeme de Philosophie Positive," will
observe that his system forms the stepping-stone from Spinozism to
Buddhism. Comte's object of worship is not, as it is with the
Buddhist, the individual man who has attained to the perfection of
his nature, but the aggregate of men, such as they have been and
are. This is his "grande conception de l'Humanite qui vient
eliminer irrevocablement celle de Dieu." Now, this enables him to
retain and to celebrate the love of the "Grand-etre, l"Etre
Supreme," as Spinoza does, and with a much better grace; for
Spinoza's God is merely infinite substance, self-developing itself
necessarily into every conceivable attribute and mode-a God in
which Intellect and Will differ so entirely from what they are in
us that they can agree only in name, and to use his own
illustration-"Non aliter scilicet, quam inter se conveniunt canis
signum celeste it canis animal latrans."* Such a being it is
obviously impossible to love. Not so, however, Comte's "Etre
Supreme." The love of God, according to Comte's theology, is in
fact one and the same thing as the love of mankind. And to this we
are by him called with an urgency which nothing can surpass, if we
are to have worship at all; for by his own showing the very
existence of the Supreme Being himself depends on our love to him.
"Car le charactere propre de ce nouveau Grand-Etre consistant a
etre necessairement compose d'elements separable, toute son
existence repose sur l'amour mutuel qui lie toujours ses diverses
parties."+
- The "occidental regenerator" meets the Buddhism of the East
also by providing an ample calendar of such Buddhus as actual
history can supply-a motley assemblage-among whom, according to
his own showing, his own name ought to stand most conspicuous. His
egotism, in fact, from first to last, is enormous. His discontent
kept him always unhappy; and his querulousness never missed an
opportunity of expressing itself. Would that, for his own
happiness, he had taken a leaf out of the book of the Oriental
Buddhu! That sage, when he attained to the perfection of
knowledge, and had clear insight into everything (as seemed to
him), after a fortnight's delighted contemplation, both of himself
and of all his surroundings, seated at the foot of a Much-alindo
tree, thus expressed himself:-"Pleasant is retirement to him who
is contented, gratified with the doctrines he has heard, gentle
and kindly disposed towards all beings, who is free from sensual
enjoyments, who is beyond the influence of worldly desire; and
supremely happy is that state in which the pride of the 'I am' is
subdued."* But this beautiful creation of the human imagination,
this perfected saint, this object of the adoration of three or
four hundred millions of living men, at las died, and what became
of him, and where is he now? To this the proper answer is, "He is
in Nirvana." But where or what is Nirvana? To this the only
discoverable equivalent in occidental thought is, that he has
altogether ceased to exist as an individualized being. He lives
only in the memory of his worshipers, and if it be not his images
in their temples, it is his memory only that they adore!
-
- Had Spinoza, when he conceived the composition of "The
Ethics," been previously acquainted with the Buddhism of the East,
he would have seen that the problem of which he contemplated the
solution had been already solved. According to Spinoza, virtue
does not consist in the culture and development of the good
affections, together with the suppression and extermination of the
bad, and in bringing into play the former only. According to him,
a liability to affections of any kind is an impotency, and all
virtue consists in living in the light of reason. In Spinozism,
just as in Buddhism, knowledge is everything; and every affection
not yet cured by knowledge, or transformed or developed into
knowledge, is a weakness, and the evidence of a nature not yet
perfected. Now, Spinoza places consciousness among the affections.
Hence, for man, when perfected according to Spinozism also, there
remains nothing but Nirvana, "in which," to use the Oriental
illustration, "the previously thinking and feeling being is where
the flame of the lamp is, when all the oil has been burnt up."
Spinoza does indeed attempt to make out that there is immortality
for the good man. But his system does not admit of such a thing.
According to Spinozism, humanity is a failure, an abortion, or, at
any rate, in all the higher attributes of his being, man never
gets beyond the embryo state. He lives and dies the subject of
many impotencies which he finds himself called upon to struggle
against, and to cure or eliminate from his being; but while doing
his best, he vanishes, according to this philosophy, from
existence for ever.
-
- But enough of these melancholy, heart-desolating,
life-destroying speculations. In our country at the present time,
as has been already stated, the popular scientific rule is to make
no religious references whatever. We are told to rest in the
physical forces as the last word, and the only safe haven of
thought. But why this should be insisted upon, or even admitted
for a moment, Reason finds it difficult to understand. Granting to
the physical forces, both when incident from without and when
acting from within, all the architectonic power which is ascribed
to them, whether with regard to stellar or solar systems, worlds,
crystals, plants, or animals, why should not these forces
themselves be investigated with a view to discover, if possible, a
theory of them also? Reason, on comparing their absolutely blind
and merely dynamical character with the exquisitely-reasoned
objects to which they give rise, immediately conceives that surely
these mechanically-acting forces are the products or the
manifestations of a higher force-a force which is not blind and
merely dynamical in its nature, as they themselves obviously are-a
force which can compass not merely concurrent and antagonistic
motions in space, but which has been able so to adjust these
concurrences and antagonisms as to construct agencies which shall
realize designs - a force, therefore, which is thoughtful and
percipient; in one word, intelligent;-a force, in fine, which is
not a mere mathematical dynamism in space and time, but a true
Power existing in its type and fulness, in one word-God. Earnest
minds in all ages and countries, in contemplating surrounding
nature, have arrived at this inference. If there be anything that
is legitimate for reason, it is to make such an inference; for,
while reason is led to this inference from without by the voice of
nature, this inference is at the same time but the articulate
expression of a constitutional intuition which in all men worships
the Unseen, and aspires to God.
- But, in contradiction of this, it is usual to say in the
present day, that such an inference belongs to religion, and that,
therefore, science has nothing to do with it. Now, surely such a
dictum is arbitrary in the highest degree. The logical continuity
of thought, science at its very fountain-head claims the
possibility of an inference of design in nature as rightfully
belonging to one and the same train of thought as that which gives
the phenomena of nature themselves. Such an inference (if there is
ground for it) is an integrand element in the interpretation of
phenomena. It is, in fact, that towards which every interpretation
which aims at completeness spontaneously tends, and in which all
interpretations which are adequate culminate. And in works which
treat of the phenomena of nature, to forbid or to set aside such
an inference, or to put it down under the ban of the term
"religion"-a term which happens at the present moment to be out of
favour with many-is neither logical nor fair. A systematic
distinction between religious, and philosophical, and scientific
ideas cannot be maintained. All the three run into each other with
the most perfect legitimacy. Their dissociation can be effected
only by art, their divorce only by violence. The "Gloria Deo" with
which the elder physicists closed their works is more logical and
more philosophical by far than the "Finis" of the moderns; for
adoration in the contemplation of the universe is always meet,
while finality is never attainable.
-
- It may be here mentioned, however, that a reconciliation
between religion and science has lately been proposed by an author
who is both extensively and profoundly versed in science, and who
writes on all the subjects which he handles with great power
equally of observation, abstraction, and generalization; for such
is Mr. Herbert Spencer, author of a "System of Philosophy", now in
the course of publication. But the terms of reconciliation which
he proposes cannot be accepted. According to him, the states of
mind to which science and religion respectively belong are
antithetic, and so also it is the subject-matter of both. Science,
according to Spencer, rightfully claims as its own all orderly
knowledge; while religion, according to the same authority, is and
ought to rest in a dogmatic nescience - merely in the affirmation
of a power in the universe, underlying phenomena and evolving them
indeed, but respecting which we ought neither to affirm nor to
deny personality, and to which we ought to refrain from ascribing
any attributes whatever-a power, in a word, which is utterly
"unknowable."
-
- Such is Mr. Spencer's philosophy. He says, that "it gives the
religious sentiment the widest possible sphere of action." In his
own mind, therefore, it has the same claims as the system of
Spinoza had in his mind; while yet, in so far as the use of the
term God is concerned, it may be regarded as the counterpart of
Spinozism. It is therefore to this extent a great improvement. Mr.
Spencer's language is never beguiling, as Spinoza's often is But
except in the omission of sacred names, and the method of reading
all things backwards, that is, from the senses to reason, Mr.
Spencer's philosophy, though of course more precise, is one and
the same with that of Spinoza. It may be said to be Spinozism
constructed according to the sensational method, and co-ordinated
with a more advanced state of physics.
-
Spencer, Spinoza
-
- True liberty, the love of God, immortality, all the most
animating beliefs and ennobling aspirations of humanity, are
excluded from Spencer's view of things no less than from that of
Spinoza. And this is the more remarkable, because he even opens
his work-and it is a great work-in language such that in reading
it, one seems to be listening to Cousin. The first sentence stands
in these words, "We too often forget that not only is there 'a
soul of goodness in things evil,' but very generally also a soul
of truth in things erroneous." And in the first paragraph he says,
"We must admit that the convictions entertained by many minds in
common are most likely to have some foundation." Then, after
having shown in an elaborate manner that the explanation of the
phenomena of nature by all mankind consists at first in affirming
as their cause the existence of a Principle of volition somewhere,
he proceeds to affirm that the progress of light and civilization,
of science and religion, consists in ridding belief of such a
Principle altogether. After admitting that "the presumption that
any current opinion is not wholly false gains in strength
according to the number of its adherents," and "that life is
impossible unless through a certain agreement between internal
convictions and external circumstances," he proceeds to set aside
the testimony of entire humanity as to a certain agreement of that
kind. He sets down the world-wide doctrine of a Will, which, when
not prompted from without, is free, whether in the individual
breast or in the Power which is manifested in the universe, as a
mistake which, though secularly committed, is yet antithetic to
all science. He considers such a Principle as excluded by the
growing certainty of an absolute uniformity of all phenomena,
physical, intellectual and moral, when the conditions of existence
are the same. Now, granting all that the author affirms as to
uniformity, is such a conclusion as this necessary or even
legitimate? There might obviously have been another solution of
the fact, if the author had a mind to look in another direction.
For, not less than a mere mechanical dynamism, a Will that is
almighty and perfectly free if co-ordinated with an intelligence
that is omniscient, must provide to every extent for uniformities
among phenomena when the conditions of existence are the same. A
considerate Theism, instead of being in any degree incompatible
with such uniformities or laws of phenomena as observation may
give, whatever their extent, instead of leaving them merely as the
unintelligible outcome of "the unknowable," which is Mr. Spencer's
position, provides for them, and explains them, and that not by
any singular and soul-mutilating hypothesis like his, but in
harmony with the catholic conviction, and the reason of
mankind.
-
- Into this position in which he presents himself to his readers
this author is driven by that which is practically and habitually
at least, if not also formally, his method, namely, a pure
Sensationalism. Conceptions in his regard are true only in so far
as they are mental imagery of individual objects given by the
senses. And all that we can do with them is to abstract and
generalize them. Hence all scientific thinking is vidifaction; and
if the highest generalizations do not give "vox et praeterea
nihil," it is merely because the author here goes a step beyond
the method which he usually follows, and along with phenomena
admits the existence of a substratum-his "unknowable," namely. He
considers himself safe in admitting this much of the philosophy of
common sense, though this only. But Comte is more true to the
sensational method when he admits only phenomena and their laws;
and Pyrrho is more consistent than either when he admits phenomena
only, and with regard to all other things suspends his judgment;
for who that goes so far as to make a question of all, or almost
all, the data of common sense, can legitimately refrain from
making it a question, whether the laws of phenomena which men of
science discover may not be laws of thinking merely imposed upon
nature as her laws? Nay, who can refrain from admitting with Kant
that they can be nothing more?
-
- If we look to the external senses alone as the only informers
of the mind as to the extent and order of the universe, we
unavoidably exclude ourselves from all that is best entitled to
the name of philosophy. We possess these senses in common with the
lower animals. Their functions in us are the same as they are in
them. And if we look to these senses alone for scientific
knowledge, it is not to be expected that we shall rise above a
knowledge of our material surroundings. The true function of the
external senses in manifestly something very different from that
of "carrying the torch of discovery around the universe." The
focal distance of the eye is co-ordinate with the range of our
prehensile organs, and the structure of the ear is suited to
report the existence in our neighborhood of a centre of
disturbance during darkness when the eye cannot act. And still
more the senses of taste, and smell, and touch, and the muscular
sense which imparts fitness equally for fighting or for flying, in
a word, the whole system of the senses, indicates clearly that
their normal function is to direct and assist in providing food
for the body and in giving warnings of bodily danger. For the
senses to determine the nature of Being, and the extent of the
universe of Being, is quite out of their way. And as to
philosophies which look to the external senses for the whole of
their contents, it is only to be expected that they shall be no
philosophies at all, and, in a word, that they shall always fail
to reach, as they have ever been found to do, the knowledge of
God, the soul, liberty, morality, immortality, those very facts
and principles which in all ages have been held to be the proper
themes of philosophy.
-
- It is not, however, from much that the senses have to show,
either for or against the Power that underlies all phenomena, that
Mr. Spencer holds that power to be utterly unknowable. It is
rather from the antilogies or contradictions in which thought is
inevitably involved when we attempt to inform ourselves about that
Power; and probably, also from the consideration of certain
features in nature, especially in the animal kingdom, which appear
to him to be irreconcilable with a Theodicy. Now, this latter
difficulty on his part, and on the part of many naturalists, calls
for a sympathy and consideration which it has not yet received
from the scientific theologian; and as to those antilogies in
which thought is ever apt to involve itself on every transcendent
theme, they are indeed intellectual phenomena of the greatest
scientific interest. But they do not warrant the destructive
criticism to which Mr. Spencer applies them. No; undoubtedly, in
the meantime, and until the phenomenon be understood, those are in
the right (Kant, Hamilton, Mansel) who, in reference to such
all-important matters of belief, take refuge from these apparent
contradictions of thought in the stronghold of our moral nature.
Already, it may be discovered that such antilogies are not
co-ordinate demonstrations of equal value and authority, the one
affirmative and the other negative of the same proposition. They
are not simultaneous but alternate, and they are not accomplished
by one and the same intellectual power, but one by the mind when
acting in its synthetic, and the other by it when acting in its
analytic phase. They are, in fact, the expression and the products
of a rhythm, which consists in alternate phases, the one
spontaneous and intuitional, the other selective and
intentional-the one purely cosmical and necessary, the other
personal and optional. Now, it is when under the dominion of this
rhythm we equate our merely logical powers with the discovery of
the universe in all its heights and depths, that we are apt to
make such sad havoc of reality, and to leave ourselves but little
to believe in, which is much worth caring for.
-
- What is wanted in order to the discovery of the truth as it
represents reality in the harmonious relation of all its sides, is
emancipation from this desultory way of viewing things, a state of
intellectual vision in the repose of the personal activity,
wherein the mind mirrors on its own boson both its own more
immediate surroundings and all that is beyond, both the finite and
the infinite, no longer in alternate conflicting flashes merely,
but harmoniously, simultaneously, steadily, clearly, and
distinctly. That such a state of intellectual vision is possible
even in this life, many have maintained; and that it is in reserve
for the human mind hereafter, there are mental phenomena
occasionally occurring in the present state of our being which go
far to prove.
-
- Is it said, that in consequence of the antinomies which exist
meantime, one does not know what to believe; and that as each
contradicts the other with seemingly equal authority and right,
the only legitimate conclusion is to discard both, and wholly to
suspend our judgment? The answer is, that if one of the sides of
the antinomy affirm and the other deny the same proposition, then
one or other of them must be in the right; for everything must
either be or not be, and it is open to inquire, on some other
ground, which of the two is that which is belief-worthy. Now, this
point may be often settled by the scientific development of the
propositions in suspense, that is by placing them in all their
ascertainable relations, and observing which of the two dovetails
into these relations as part of that unity, which all things
doubtless are in their ground, and which of the two contradicts
these relations.
-
- But this is to view an affirmation in all its consequences.
And this in our day is very generally denounced. We are told that
Truth must be sought and asserted without regard to consequences;
that in Truth there never can be any danger; and so on. And all
this would be very sound if the truth in question were no longer
in question, but fully ascertained fact-if, in short, the inquiry
were satisfactorily completed, and the affirmation reached were
the last word of an irreproachable demonstration directly
effected. But this is not always possible even in mathematics.
Even in that typically demonstrative science the REDUCTIO AD
ABSURDUM is often unavoidable. And if, in reference to the
comparatively simple relations of space, such a method of proof be
necessary, how much more may we not expect it to be necessary in
reference to such complicated relations as are implied in the idea
of humanity, its mission, its well-being, and its destinies? In
this walk almost nothing can be demonstrated but by cumulative
evidence-evidence surrounding the proposition in hand in every
direction. And if in connection with that proposition consequences
present themselves, which at once manifestly flow from it, and
which are at the same time contrary to what is known to be true,
or which are destructive of what is known to be right, then there
is adequate evidence that what we have been supposing to be true
is not true in reality; for nothing is more certain, and it is
universally admitted, that truth, when justly entitled to the name
of scientific, is harmonious, not merely with existence, but with
the well-being of existence-that is, not merely with reality, but
with moral order-not merely with that which is, but also with that
which ought to be.
-
- It may perhaps be said that the system of thought which is
opposed in these pages, inasmuch as it denies all true liberty,
all free choice to man, leaves no room for this distinction, no
legitimate place for the term "ought." Nevertheless, under that
system this distinction remains. In the merely mechanical sphere,
monstrosities and abortions and wrong places are possible, as well
as typical forms and normal developments and relations. And it
will not be denied that Truth, though it may be descriptive of the
monstrous or disorderly in the instance in hand, yet in the very
degree that it becomes entitled to the name of Scientific, becomes
harmonious with the typical and the normal, and, in a word,
descriptive of that which ought to be.
-
CHAPTER
II.
-
-
- THE SO-CALLED SCIENTIFIC METHOD, OR
METHOD OF MERELY OUTSIDE OBSERVATION, THOUGH VERY CONVENIENT AND
FLATTERING TO SENSE, IS WHOLLY INADEQUATE FOR THE DISCOVERY OF THE
MOST IMPORTANT REALITIES.
-
- We are all born and exist for some time in a state of profound
ignorance as to everything. But a certain mental capacity soon
begins to manifest itself in each of us. In some point or other we
all proceed to chip the shell of ignorance - we all try, more or
less, to acquire knowledge, that is, to give contents to our
curiosity which shall present to our own satisfaction the
realities which we ourselves are, as also those by which we are
surrounded.
-
- Mental representations of these realities, provided they be
soul-satisfying, we name truth; and it is admitted that there is
no pursuit which is more worthy than that of truth, and nothing
that is more important than a right method of pursuing it.
- And what, let us ask, is that right method? At first sight
this question seems easily answered. There seems to be no
difficulty about the matter. It naturally occurs to every one that
we ought to begin with that which is at once most palpable and
most certain, and to build upon that.
-
- But no one can pursue this method long, before he is met by a
difficulty which threatens to throw it out of gear, and which
ultimately does so completely. In a word, the palpable and the
certain cannot be found meeting in any one and the same object!
That which is most palpable is by no means that which is most
certain; and that which is most certain is, of all things, the
most impalpable. Matter alone is palpable; but a little reflection
soon compels the admission that matter is not so certain as at
first sight it seemed to be-not so certain, in fact, as mind. Thus
matter, in so far at least as philosophy has to do with it, can
only be thought. Sensation, in which it is maintained that all
thought begins, whether of sight or sound or any other kind, is
only a form of thought; and thought is a function of mind. It is
mind, therefore, not matter, which possesses the highest
certainty: and it thus becomes a question whether that outward
thing which at first captivates our senses, which we call matter,
and which we affirms something quite different from mind, may not
be some statical and opaque condition standing opposite to us of
that same thing, which, when referred to Self and in possession of
all its possible limpidity and quickness, is mind.
- But of the two, matter alone, as has been said, possesses the
charm of palpability, that is, the power of presenting itself to
us without disagreeably interfering with us; and this is, of all
kinds of evidence, the most pleasing, being at once respectful and
persuasive. And hence it has come to pass that, though it is only
as an object of mind that matter can be an object to us at all,
still matter holds its place in the popular regard as the great
thing; and, under influences which can be fully explained, there
are many who hold that matter is everything. This our own day is
remarkable for the number of those who hold this view, who look
upon matter as the Alpha and the Omega of existence. But there are
others who advocate with no less zeal the claims of mind. And thus
that method for the pursuit of knowledge which seemed at first to
be altogether free from objection, namely, to begin with that
which is at once most palpable and most certain, completely breaks
down, and issues in a distraction and a controversy as to the
respective claims of matter and mind.
-
- How then shall we adjust the difference? Shall we attempt a
compromise by accepting both mind and matter as co-ordinate and
aboriginal? This is what many have done, especially in ancient
times. But such is the constitution of intelligence that it cannot
but regard as unsatisfactory a duality at the fountain-head of
Being. The condition of intellectual satisfaction and repose is
the discovery and the holding of an unity there. And hence the
history of philosophy has presented hitherto little else but a
series of phases of alternate partisanship as to the first of
things-now for the palpable, now for the certain, now for matter,
now for mind. The former gives to philosophy, as the system of the
universe, Materialism, in which mind is regarded as merely a
function or mode of action of matter when possessing a special
organization, or at any rate it gives, as the only content of the
universe, call it matter or not, something which is the subject of
mechanically-acting force \merely, and to which liberty or a true
choice, as also a possible existence apart from the special
organization which manifests the mental phenomena, are denied. The
latter gives to philosophy some system of Idealism, in which
either matter is never reached in its palpable characteristics at
all, or else under the guise of an ideal world a system of things
is conceived which is as fatalistic as Materialism. So far as I am
aware, no philosophical system exists which, on an unity as its
basis, provides at once for the free and the forced, at once for
mind and matter-placing both in a popular, and at the same time, a
scientific relationship to one another. The systems of Spinoza and
of Hegel, grounded, the one on an universal substance, and the
other on an uniform process, are certainly great intellectual
achievements, and both are highly scientific in their development;
but, although both repudiate the charge, yet both have the defects
referred to: both are equally irresponsive as to what is implied
in personality as commonly understood, whether in God or man.
Neither of them is suited popularly to explain humanity or to
supply its wants.
-
- Now, all this is very unsatisfactory; and hence in all ages,
more or less, and most especially in our own, an abandonment, nay,
a denunciation of the method of the pursuit of truth which has
been indicated. Hence a disregard, in the first instance, equally
of the most palpable objects and the most certain as they present
themselves to us. Hence, instead of an outwardly-directed appeal
to Nature, a giving to Self the choice of what to begin with! And
what has this choice been? Naturally it has been to the effect
that we ought to begin with that which, however defective its
claims in other respects, shall have at least this personal
recommendation, that it promise to be most easily understood! Now,
this implies that to which we direct our study in the first
instance shall possess the smallest number of properties; that it
shall exist and act with the least variety, and be placed in the
fewest relation. But this leads us to fix upon mere vacuity and
mere duration as the first objects of our regard. It therefore
gives as the first mental occupation, the play of our
intelligence, now in a synthetic, now in an analytic phase, upon
space and time as the ground,-that is, it gives arithmetic,
geometry, and cinematics After these comes that, which, being
viewed as finite, may be elaborated by thought as existing in
definite quantitative relation with space and time, viz., matter
in general. Then among material objects come those which seem to
be the most simple, as, for instance, the heavenly bodies on the
one hand, which are so far away as to be barely visible, and the
molecules of bodies on the other hand, which are so near as not to
be visible at all. Then after these come objects which fall within
the cognizance of other senses as well as the sense of
sight,-minerals, plants, and animals, including man and his ways,
who comes last of all. Such is the so-called "positive method"
which has been so boldly and consistently developed by A. Comte,
and has been maintained by him as giving "the hierarchy of the
sciences."
-
- But this method had come into favour before Comte's day, and
it is very generally followed now by those who care little for his
views. Thus, modern systems of chemistry generally begin with
those elements of bodies which they deem to be most simple;
systems of crystallography with those forms which are most
regular; systems of botany and zoology with those plants and
animals which have or seem to have fewest organs and endowments;
and these systems come to a close with the discussion of those
objects which are the most highly organized and perfect in the
kingdom they belong to. It may be said that this method has
prevailed during almost the whole of this century. And at the
present day it is never doubted but that it is most philosophical.
And to this method the great progress and the highly advanced
state of science-of which one hears so much-are said to be in a
great measure owing.
-
- Now, however the fact may be as to the advanced state of
science in our day, whether this be a reality, or only the
expression of that popular egotism in which no age is defective,
it is surely desirable that we should keep in mind what the
circumstances are which led to the adopting of this method, what
the ground on which it stands, and what its sanction. For, as to
its ground (however we may boast), it manifestly stands on no
basis more respectable than our intellectual impotence; and, as to
sanction, it has none higher than necessity. Instead of a sound
method which shall be natural and objective, and which shall lay
hold of Nature as she presents herself, and which may happly join
her in her dance, it is the substitution of a method which is
wholly subjective and a thing of human convenience merely. It is
an attempt to acquire a knowledge of Nature, by laying hold of her
train merely, with chalk in hand, to scribble our own notions on
her skirts, while we, on our part, are creeping up as high as we
may before she shake us off. On the ground of comparative
facility, this method may have much to commend it. It may be
maintained, perhaps, that considering our intellectual means, or
rather our want of them, it is a necessity, at least for the
general run of inquirers. But, at any rate, it ought to be
remembered respecting it, that it is not at all the reflection of
Nature, rather that it is a creation of despair, the despair of
man, who, before he will believe, protests that he must see with
his own eyes, and who, before he will admit that his position is
high, must show that he has climbed up to where he is. Hence in
this short life of ours, in those who adopt this method, there is
a sufficient reason why they do not and cannot reach the highest
truths. In beginning their studies on the level of their own
impotency, they place these truths in such remoteness from where
they begin, that life is over before they reach them.
-
- This ought to be, and which alone would be, if our
intellectual power were equal to what we undertake. If the mind of
man in its present embodied state possessed a cosmical intuition,
or even such an intuition of our more immediate surroundings as
some of the inferior animals appear to possess-if our own
organization, for instance, where visible to us when viewed from
within, and we could see its whole structure and functions as
clearly and distinctly as we can see, or suppose that we see, the
structure and functions of an amoeba or a polype, would any one in
that case propose to head the zoological system with such
creatures as I have just named? No; in that case reason could not
be kept from insisting upon knowing and understanding at once the
typical animal, that species in which organization and function
attain the highest perfection. And, doubtless, all the other
members of the zoological field would be distributed in relation
to the typical species, and be viewed as so many aimings at or
falling away from the type.
-
- It may, perhaps, be thought that, provided we complete the
course of study which we have begun, and reach man, though it be
at last, it matters little which end we begin at, whether with the
HOMO SAPIENS of the "Systema Naturae" of Linne and the old school,
or with the ANIMAUX APATHIQUES of Lamarck, or the PROTOZOA of the
more modern school. But this were to mistake. This were to suppose
that we are creatures of entirely free and pure intelligence,
whereas, on the contrary, we are in the main creatures of memory
and habit, building up every successive acquisition of knowledge
on what we possessed before as its foundation. This were to ignore
the law of reintegration, in virtue of which every new step in
knowledge tends to suggest and to reproduce our knowledge already
acquired, and to lead us to rest in the objects first
studied.
-
- Nor is it in natural history, as commonly understood merely,
that reason would lead us to adopt a method directly the reverse
of that which is popular, if we possessed the intellectual means.
If we possessed as clear and distinct a perception of mind, its
powers and laws, as we possess, or think we possess, of matter and
its laws, we should certainly begin with the study of mind in
preference to the study of matter. To this we should be led not
only by its magical endowments, and its being our very selves, or
at least the field in which we are always digging, and which we
are always bent on cultivating, but because it is only through
mind, nay, only in terms of mind, that we can know anything about
matter, or indeed anything at all. If a thorough and scientific
knowledge of mind were easily attainable, there can be no doubt
that just as if we had a clear insight into the structure and
functioning of the human organism, we should hold Man to be the
type in the zoological kingdom, and should view all other
organisms in relation to the human frame, so, could we but have a
clear and distinct knowledge of mental being and its attributes as
a first attainment in philosophy, we should hold Mind to be the
type of being, and refer all other sorts of beings which are less
highly endowed to mental being, regarding them all as fallings
away, or residuary forms or states of that which, in its type,
constitutes mind or spirit.
-
- But every such notion as this is quite foreign to the mode of
thought which is fashionable in science in our day. That mode is
to look only at things which are outside of ourselves-things of
which, consequently, we can see but little, and which therefore
seem too very simple and easily understood; and hence a tone and
general character of modern scientific thought which is much to be
deplored. Hence mere matter has come to be the favorite in popular
regard, and is permitted to claim the homage of all primary study;
and mind, when at last it obtrudes itself in connection with
certain organisms, is looked upon merely as some kind of accessory
to these organisms, some kind of efflor escence of matter when it
happens to be built up into certain molecular structures, as
nothing more, in fact, but a mere phenomenon, a mere function,
accomplishing itself under the same laws of necessity as determine
all material movements, and vanishing altogether when the organism
which manifests it deases to act. In a word, a homage to our
intellectual weakness, the consecration of our inability to
comprehend at first anything but what seems to be quite simple,
and the holding up to Nature our own ignorance as the mirror in
which the universe is to reflect itself, is betraying us through a
forgetfulness of the grounds of our method into a denial of God,
the soul, liberty, immortality-all, in fine, that givesw value and
dignity to humanity.
-
- Or, if haply we still continue to view nature as a creation,
it is leading us in our thoughtlessness to ascribe to the
procedure of the great Creator the same intellectual weakness
which actuates ourselves. Thus, as the system of scientific
knowledge, according to the most modern conception of it, is a
gradual development of science out of nescience, beginning with
the most empty and simple objects, and gradually rising to those
which are more richly endowed (the whole scheme being the dictate
of our intellectual weakness and want of comprehension at first),
so the whole procedure of Nature itself begins now to be
scientifically regarded as a development also from the low to the
high, from the simple to the complex. Those animals, for instance,
our ocular analysis of which either is, or is supposed to be, most
easy, and with which, therefore, the study of Zoology is begun,
are named Protozoa-a term which, taken by itself, means something
mere, or rather something else, than that they are the first
objects of study. And the theory of all plants, all animals, which
is at the present moment most popular, is, that they have all been
similarly developed from one or a few germs, which were more
simple than any plants or animals now existing, and which came
into being at an epoch previous to which neither plants nor
animals existed at all. Such is the theory of development. But it
will abundantly appear as we proceed that the Analytical and the
Synthetical in nature are everywhere co-ordinate, and that there
is every reason to believe that they were from the first coeval.
The theory of development, therefore, considered as an objective
theory or history of nature, if it be true at all, is at any rate
no more than half the truth.
-
- But any merely cosmological speculation, however inadequate,
can only be a small evil compared with a denial of the liberty,
the responsibility, and the morality of man. Yet to this result a
commencement of scientific study with matter and force as the
primary data, if that study is made consistent with itself all
through, cannot but lead. Such a method tends to rob us, or
rather, indeed, to steal away from us before we are aware the best
part of our inheritance as men.
-
- Let us, then, at whateve incovenience, reverse this method.
Instead of looking around us, like Buffon, or beneath us, like
more modern naturalists, to pick up worms in the first instance,
let us rather, like Sokrates, look to ourselves, and see whether,
from what we know and feel that we are, something may not be
learned of mental Being, and, possibly, through mental Being of
Being general.
-
- That mental rather than material Being must be regarded as the
type of Being, must be admitted by every one who admits that there
is such a thing as mental Being at all. For not only is mind, as
has been already stated, more highly endowed than matter, but it
rules throughout the universe, and regulates everything. Or, if
this be disputed, it must at any rate be admitted that it rules in
philosophy, and regulates everything there. It may indeed be said,
and it is too often said, that there is not such thing as mental
Being; but with equal cogency, to say the least, it has also been
often said, and may be said again, that there is no such thing as
material Being. Let these two conflicting views, then, in the
meantime be set off against each other.
- But have we the means, it will here be asked, of learning
anything about mental Being with which we thus desire to become
acquainted in the first instance? Now to this we answer Yes;
better means of becoming acquainted with it than we possess in
reference to material Being, though haply the use of these means
implies more application, more patience, and more perceverance.
Thus, in reference to matter, if we can see it at all, we can see
it only on the outside; for matter, when seen, is always on the
outside of us. It may, for aught that we know, have an eye within
itself to see its own interior, but at any rate it has no tongue
to tell us what is there. In a word, we are completely excluded
from all direct knowledge of the interior of matter. But with
regard to mental Being, on the contrary, we are sure that in
certain cases, at least, it has an eye within itself. In the case
of ourselves it has such an eye. And with that eye we stand in
such immediate communication that we not only hold it as our own,
but as our very selves. Its informations do not come to us at
second hand at all; its sight are intuitions. We say each for
himself and with his entire consciousness of truth,-I feel, I see,
I think, I will.
-
- So far, then all is satisfactory. There is no doubt that this
"I," this EGO has the power, at least when placed as a member in
the system of the universe, to supply itself with contents. There
is no doubt that when these contents possess certain
characteristics, the EGO holds and receives them as truth, and
affirms them to others as truth. And with regard to the most
important and the most constantly recurring of these contents,
there is no doubt that men in general are agreed about them that
they are truth. They constitute the common sense of mankind.
-
- But yet, let it not be conceared that to the speculative mind
a difficulty presents itself even with regard to these truths.
Thus, whilst the EGO affirms the ambient universe, or any of its
features, it also asserts its own liberty, its own right to be
free, that is, to be as if it were itself the universe. Hence the
serious question, Can this EGO be expected to present to itself
truthfully and to conceive aright the external universe to which
it thus appears to object? There is obviously room for a quenstion
here. In devoting ourselves to the acquisition of a knowledge of
mental Being, therefore, our first step must be to acquire, if
possible, a knowledge of this EGO, this eye within, which thus in
successive moments seems to see and not to see, to affirm and to
deny. In a word, we must endeavour, in the first instance, to
ascertain the structure or normal mode of functioning of
perceptivity as it exists in us; in other words, of consciousness.
We have seen that it tends both to affirm and to deny, and curious
it is to observe the way in which popular science does homage to
this peculiarity. It gives the most hasty solution possible.
Within a certain sphere, that of physical science namely, it
unconditionally accept an universal affirmative; beyond that
sphere it affirms an universal negative! But this solution, as
might be expected, does not stand long. After having told us that
matter and force, definite and unchangeable in amount from all
eternity, is the whole of existence, and that it is by the use of
the senses only, aided by abstraction, that anything can be known,
it tells us in the next breath that all perception and the
external world, as the external senses and consciousness give it,
is mere illusion!
-
- One must search far back into the history of philosophy if he
is to find a state of anarchy in science as great as that which
exists at the present day.
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