alists affirm its existence millions of ages before there was any mind to perceive it. Thus they begin with affirming that mind is a function of matter and end with affirming that matter is a phenomenon of mind. When the sensationalist seeks to apprehend mind, he can apprehend it only as sensations which presuppose the existence of matter and are occasioned by its presence. When he seeks to apprehend matter, it is merely an object of sense having reality only as related to the sensations which it is supposed to precede and occasion. We are told that mind consists of sensations occasioned by the presence of bodies and then we are told that bodies are merely abstractions of the sensations which themselves occasion. If we attempt to stop this logical see-saw, and insist on definitions of mind and matter which will not alternately annul each other, the only reality left to either term is sensation, without an object felt or a subject feeling. And this necessitates complete agnosticism. This process was exemplified in the transition of English philosophy from Locke through Berkeley to Hume; from sensationalism through idealism to universal skepticism or complete agnosticism. Berkeley, however, saved himself from inconsistency by admitting our knowledge of personal being and using the idealism thus developed to refute sensationalism. He, therefore, could acknowledge that the essence of matter is in its relativity to mind and still consistently hold to its reality because mind is real. And he consistently argued that since "sensible things. . . depend not on my thought and have an existence distinct from being perceived by me, there must be some other mind wherein they exist. As sure, therefore, as the sensible world really exists, so sure is there an infinite omnipresent spirit who contains and supports it."* But Mill and the sensationalists leave themselves no resource by which to save either the Ego or the non-ego. These speculations have a curious interest as exemplifying the inextricable difficulties inseparable from denying the existence of spirit. Prof. Huxley says: "The existence of a self and a not-self are hypotheses by which we account for the facts of consciousness."†. But who makes the hypothesis, and to whom do the facts of consciousness appear, and to whom is it necessary to account for them? In the definitions of mind and matter just now cited we have for the outward world a possibility without any power, a permanence with nothing that is permanent except a powerless possibility, and the permanent possibility of a sensation without any entity or being other than the sensation. For the self we have sensations in a series with no mind which is the subject of them or takes cognizance of their serial order; "infinite possibilities of feeling" with no power or being within or without to make them pos Berkeley's Three Dialogues. Lay Sermons, p. 356. sible; these possibilities "requiring for their actual realization conditions which may or may not take place," these conditions themselves being possibilities of sensation; though these possibilities of sensation which are the conditions of the possibility of sensation may never take place, yet "as possibilities they are always in existence and many of them present." Did ever mediæval scholastic bewilder himself and his readers in a more confusing maze of words? Mr. Spencer with his "transfigured realism" still finds himself in similar difficulties. "We can think of matter only in terms of mind. We can think of mind only in terms of matter. When we have pushed our explorations of the first to the utmost limit, we are referred to the second for a final answer; and when we have got the final answer to the second we are referred back to the first for an interpretation of it. We find the value of x in the terms of y; then we find the value of y in the terms of x; and so on we may continue forever without coming nearer to a solution.”* When it is shown that sensationalism is inconsistent with materialism, the sensationalist may reply that he cares no more for materialism and the agnostic's Unknowable, than for atheism, theism or metaphysics; they are alike beyond the sphere of human knowledge and have no legitimate place in scientific thought. He may comfort himself with thinking that at least he will escape all these puzzling questions and have opportunity to pursue unvexed his investigations among phenomena of which he can have certain knowledge. We now see that in this expectation he is necessarily disappointed. Physical science leaves him behind helplessly entangled in the difficulties and inconsistencies of his own theory of knowledge. IV. But if we acknowledge the existence in the personality of man of a power supernatural and hyper-material, that is, of spirit, all these difficulties vanish, and the reality of our knowledge both of nature and the supernatural, of matter and the hyper-material is established on an immovable basis. And the truth of this admission is confirmed by the fact that it solves the otherwise unsolvable problem of the universe. We are no longer obliged with Spencer to find the Ultimate Reality in an Absolute Unknowable, in which subject and object, spirit and matter are united. We find that Ultimate and Absolute Reality in Energizing Reason. In this we find united and eternal the Reason and the Power, which account for the existence both of matter and finite spirits in the unity of one all-comprehending and rational system expressing the truths, conformed to the laws, and progressively realizing the ideals and ends of the Wisdom and Love of perfect and absolute Reason. * Psychology: 272, Vol. I., p. 627. V. Aside from scientific thought the impression also prevails in the popular mind that we have clear and certain knowledge only through the senses. To this unscientific impression materialists appeal; they say a spirit is a "ghost," which no sensible person believes to exist; it is "nothing." And this impression is undoubtedly an important source of doubt or disbelief of the existence of spirit or the supernatural. But if people would give the subject a little thought they would know that knowledge does not come from the senses alone. Even of the outward world we know far more than we see or handle. We do not so much see with our eyes as through them; not so much the visible as the invisible. On a printed page all which the eye sees is some black marks on a white surface; but through the marks I see the thoughts of the writer, and the scenes and events which he describes. In prospecting for ore one sees with the eye only the ground and the rocks; but through these he sees the ore which the visible formation reveals. A babe sees on its mother's face certain configurations of the surface; but through the smile, the frown, or the tears it sees the mother's heart. We read nature like a book, seeing the unseen through the seen. And the unseen includes the greater part of our knowledge of nature. Nor are the impressions of sense the only trustworthy knowledge. A man has certain knowledge of his own thoughts and feelings, of his own individuality and identity. But the knowledge of these realities transcends sense. He has knowledge of mathematical axioms and demonstrations; and though he may question the correctness of his observation of a sensible object, he cannot doubt the truth of a mathematical demonstration. When the senses present to us the firmament as a blue dome, through which the sun and stars move from east to west, or parallel rails as converging, we must resort to reason and judgment to find the true significance of the sensible presentation. Every hour of the day we thus interpret and correct the representations of sense by the larger knowledge of reason transcending sense 79. Second Materialistic Objection: from the Correlation of Mental Phenomena with Motion. I. A second objection to the existence of personal spirit is that all mental phenomena are correlated with molecular motion of the brain and nerves, and are transformable into it; that thus they are fully accounted for and explained by the law of the persistence of force; and therefore they are no evidence or manifestation of the existence of spirit. This is the essential doctrine of the current materialism. Its existence is staked on proving this doctrine; failing to establish it materialism demonstrates that it has no explanation of mental phenomena and has no further claims to consideration as a philosophical system. The materialism of the eighteenth century also rested on physiological explanations of the facts of mind. Cabanis in his earlier writings taught that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. Condillac taught that all mental phenomena are simply transformed sensations. Baron d'Holbach defined thought to be an agitation of the nerves. Lamettrie and Helvetius broached a similar doctrine. Noiré says that the materialists of that century taught that a fume of the stomach, if it had taken its way upward to the brain, might have become a sublime thought.* The physiological materialism of to-day, though connected with an advanced knowledge of science, is scarcely less crude. Moleschott teaches that "thought is a motion of matter." Karl Vogt holds, with Cabanis, that "thought stands in the same relation to the brain as the bile to the liver." Dr. Büchner, following Vogt, though objecting to the coarseness and inexactness of his illustration, teaches that the soul is a product of the development of the brain, just as muscular activity is a product of muscular development, and secretion a product of glandular development. "The same power which digests by means of the stomach, thinks by means of the brain." "The brain is only the carrier and the source, or rather the sole cause of the spirit or thought.” "Mental activity is a function of the cerebral substance." Mr. Charles Bray says: "Conscious cerebration or mind is transformed force received into the body in the food, and is, like all force, persistent or indestructible." Prof. Haeckel says: "The human mind is a function of the central nervous system."§ Lewes says: "The neural process and the feeling are one and the same process viewed under different aspects. . . . Mind . . . is a function of the organism; and this both in the mathematical and the biological sense of the term."|| Prof. Tyndall, though elsewhere explicitly denying that matter as ordinarily conceived can explain life and mind, yet "prolongs the vision backward . . . . and discerns in matter . . . the promise and potency of every form and quality of terrestrial life." Prof. Huxley says: "While it is impossible to demonstrate that any given phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any one who is acquainted with the history of science will admit that its progress has in all ages meant, * Die Welt als Entwickelung des Geistes; ss. 18, 19. Force and its Mental and Moral Correlates: p. 98. Belfast Address. and now more than ever means, the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity."* Lange says: "The peculiar kind of motion which we call rational must be explained by the common laws of all motion, or there is no explanation at all. The defect of all materialism is that it stops with this explanation at the point where the highest problems of philosophy begin. But whoever boggles with pretended principles of reason, which admit of no concrete intelligent apprehension, in the explanation of outward nature including the rational man, destroys the whole basis of science, whether his name is Aristotle or Zeller."† II. Before refuting this objection I make the following explanations of the question at issue: 1. Admitting that mental action in man is accompanied by molecular action of the brain and by waste of neural matter which must be replaced by food, I propose to show that materialism cannot account for the mental action. If an observer with a microscope could see in the living brain the molecular orbits of anger and the different molecular orbits of love, that would no more prove a materializing of mind than the familiar fact that without a microscope we see anger paling in the face and benignity beaming upon it. The fact that the spirit in its action affects the bodily organization does not disprove the existence of spirit any more than the fact that piano-keys have different combinations of movement to express different tunes proves that music is identical with the motion, and that there is no musician. Moleschott's "No thought without phosphorus," might be true of all living men, and yet not prove materialism nor disprove the existence of spirit. Materialism cannot account for or explain mental phenomena by the fact that they are accompanied by molecular action of the brain. It not only cannot account for them philosophically, but it also cannot account for them empirically by co-ordinating the mental phenomena and the molecular motions under the law of the persistence of force. And if it cannot account for them, it proves itself false; for it is the very essence of. materialism that it must account for all phenomena, physical and mental, by matter and motor-force. 2. It is not essential to my argument to prove that the human spirit or any finite spirit ever exists and acts separate from and independent of matter. This connection is analogous to the connection between matter and force as commonly presented in physical science. Matter and force Physical Basis of Life: p. 20. † Geschichte des Materialismus. I., 20, 21. |