THE SKETCHER.
CHAPTER I.
GOD.
As the most important of all intuitions, as one of the "faedera
humani gentis," which all men are bound to respect, its witnesses
lifting up their voices from the past, the ruins of places of worship,
all the world over where no other monuments are to be found, and its
witnesses for the present and the future, temples that still stand
entire, or that are now being built new from the foundation; as one of
the zoopyra of Reason which are never extinguished, except in such
states of extreme barbarism or scepticism, that all the other
characteristic beliefs of humanity are extinguished along with it, our
Philosophy lays its ground in the affirmation of God.
If it be asked what we mean by God, we answer that we mean what is
usually meant by the term - that Being, namely, whom it is right and
reasonable to worship and adore - a glorious Personality inhabiting
immensity and eternity yet unextended and indivisible, immutable and
yet ever-living, almighty yet never acting otherwise than according to
the views of perfect intelligence - such intelligence being in Him an
aboriginal attribute co-ordinate with His irresistible power, the two
in one constituting His will, of which the characteristic is perfect
goodness.
If it be said that such a conception implies contradictions, we
reply that to such seeming contradictions we attach no weight whatever.
We hold that they are explained by the theory of the antilogies of
consciousness which has been already given, and that, notwithstanding
their seeming conflict with each other, they are the nearest
approximation to truth which is attainable by the popular consciousness
when attempting to compass an articulate conception of the Infinite and
the Absolute.
Our philosophy, then, as to its ground is precisely that of the
Newtonian epoch; and considering that the spirit of our times in this
respect is so different from the spirit of that epoch, let us here
remind the reader of the remarks on this subject with which Newton
himself closes his Principia-that work which, by the general consent of
the Philosophical world, is the greatest and the most valuable of all
the works that were ever given to Science. Referring to God, he
says-----
"This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but
as Lord over all; and on account of His dominion He is wont to be
called Lord God, or Universal Ruler; for God is a relative word, and
has a respect to servants; and DEITY is the dominion of God not over
His own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the
world, but over servants. The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite,
absolutely perfect; but a being, however perfect, without dominion,
cannot be said to be Lord God; for we say, my God, Your God, the God of
ISRAEL, the God of gods, and Lord of Lords; but we do not say, my
Eternal, your Eternal, the Eternal of ISRAEL, the Eternal of gods; we
do not say, my Infinite, or my Perfect: these are titles which have no
respect to servants. The word God usually signifies Lord; but every
lord is not a God. It is the dominion of a spiritual being which
constitutes a God: a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion makes a true,
supreme, or imaginary God. And from His true dominion it follows that
the true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and, from
His other perfections, that He is a supreme, or most perfect. He is
eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient-that is, His duration
reaches from eternity to eternity; His presence from infinity to
infinity; He governs all things and knows all things that are or can be
done. He is not eternity or infinity, but eternal and infinite; He is
not duration or space, but He endures and is present. He endures for
ever, and He is everywhere present; and by existing always and
everywhere, He constitutes duration and space. Since every particle of
space is always, and every indivisible moment of duration is
everywhere, certainly the Marker and Lord of all things cannot be never
and nowhere. Every soul that has perception is though in different
times and in different organs of sense and motion, still the same
indivisible person. There are given successive parts in duration,
co-existent parts in space, but neither the one nor the other in the
person of a man, or his thinking principle; and much less can they be
found in the thinking substance of God. Every man, so far as he is a
thing that has perception, is one and the same man during his whole
life, in all and each of his organs of sense. God is the same God,
always and everywhere. He is omnipresent not virtually only, but also
substantially; for virtue cannot subsist without substance. In Him are
all things contained and moved; yet neither affects the other. God
suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance
from the omnipresence of God. It is allowed by all that the Supreme God
exists necessarily; and by the same necessity exists always and
everywhere. Whence also He is all similar, all eye, all ear, all brain,
all arm, all power to perceive, to understand, and to act; but in a
manner not at all human, in a manner not at all corporeal, in a manner
utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we
no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and
understands all things. He is utterly void of all body and bodily
figure, and can therefore neither be seen nor heard, nor touched; nor
ought He to be worshipped under the representation of any corporeal
thing. We have ideas of his attributes, but what the real substance of
anything is we know not. In bodies, we see only their figures and
colors, we hear only their sounds, we touch only their outward surface,
we smell only their smells, and taste their savors; but their inward
substances are not to be known either by our senses, or by any reflex
act of our minds; much less, then, have we any idea of the substance of
God. We know Him only by His most wise and excellent contrivances of
things and final causes; we admire Him for His perfections; but we
reverence and adore Him on account of His dominion, for we adore Him as
His servants; and a God without dominion, providence, and final causes,
is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity,
which is certainly the same always and everywhere, could produce no
variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find
suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the
ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing. But, by way of
allegory, God is said to see, to speak, to laugh, to love, to hate, to
desire, to give, to receive, to rejoice, to be angry, to fight, to
frame, to work, to build; for all our notions of God are taken from the
ways of mankind by a certain similitude, which, though not perfect, has
some likeness, however. And thus much concerning God; to discourse of
whom from the appearances of things does certainly belong to Natural
Philosophy."
But here it may perhaps be said, Why quote from others? Since we
claim existence for a higher, or at least a less embarrassed mode of
vision than that which belongs to ordinary thinking, why not invoke the
aid of this "apperception" or "perspection," this "vision of repose,"
to enable us to obtain and to express the attributes of God more purely
and serenely, and free from all semblance of contradiction? To this we
answer, that we are contented that the light we claim should be used
for the purpose, not of discovery, but of criticism merely, that it
should show us the cause of those contradictions which are imminent in
consciousness when it addresses itself to any transcendental thesis,
and point out to us which to hold as the truth-whether the thesis or
the anti-thesis. As to the Attributes of God, attempts have been made
to reach them in other forms than those in which they express
themselves in consciousness, both by the Asiatic and the European mind.
But so long ago as the days of the Patriarch Job, it was discovered
that the attempt was hopeless, In emptying the conception of God of the
earthly, the anthropomorphic, philosophers in general have only
substituted the unearthly, not the heavenly. But yet there are some,
perhaps many, and of these Krause* in Europe, and Hickok in America
have fallen in my way, whose views I would gladly repeat here.
For myself I cannot find words to express what I may perhaps wish
to say; and I cannot help thinking it very desirable that investigators
of such matters generally should remember that the vernacular meaning
of words is insuperable, and so refrain from putting into unsuitable
words that which, as private thought, may be all right and easily
intelligible, but which in words comes out no better perhaps than
paradox or blank affirmation, stupefying to the brain, and wasting
precious time to the reader.
CHAPTER II.
CREATION.
The Being of God, such as has been conceived, implies that all
besides Himself must be His creation-that is, either directly caused or
permitted by Him; for He is almighty, and He is in possession of
immensity and eternity, all space and all time as His own field for the
manifestation of His own Glory.
But here an objection is raised on this very ground to the
existence of a creation altogether. In the Divine Being it is said all
fulness dwells from all eternity, and whatever is, or possibly can be
is God. Nor, though it were possible, is it conceivable how a Being,
who is perfect in Himself, and a perfect stranger to every want, could
ever be visited by a motive to award existence to that which, being
finite, cannot but be imperfect.
Now as to the possibility of a creation, it is to be replied that,
in a Being who is infinite in Power, there is distinctly implied the
power to award existence, though we may not be able to construe in our
thought such an act. And while creation must thus be admitted to be
possible, there is something in the nature of sensibility which renders
a creation probable-nay, leads reason to expect a creation. Thus, among
the many things that are known to us, happiness is invaluable, it is
that which is very worthy of existence, and very expressive of
goodness. Now, happiness is essentially an individualized thing. In the
absence of a creation there is no more than one Being who can possibly
be happy-that is, the Almighty Himself. By creation, on the other hand,
and in a creation, there may possibly be all but infinite millions who
may be happy; inasmuch, therefore, as the perfection of God implies
that He is perfect in goodness, we are led by a regard to His
attributes to infer that He will award existence to a creation.
This argument, it is true, goes only to explain the existence of a
creation, and to justify it in so far as that creation consists of
sentient creatures, or creatures capable of happiness; but, possibly,
much non-sentient scaffolding may be necessary to pave the way for such
a creation, and to uphold it. We are not at present in a position to
deny that the creation of individualized objects, such as suns,
planets, crystals, molecules, plants, may be explicable on the
principle of a sound theodicy, though they be not capable of happiness.
Such objects may possible be necessary, as a ground on which sentient
creatures may stand, or a womb from which they may be brought forth;
the whole creation meanwhile marching as straight and as fast as is
possible to the production of sentient creatures, as its end and aim.
Now, in these conjectures there is nothing that is contradicted by
observation of the actual creation so far as we can see into it. On the
contrary, by all that we see around us, and of which we form a part,
they are verified. Living and sentient creatures, so far as they are
actually known to us, require a ground on which they may stand, or a
medium in which they may move. Nor is that ground or medium necessary
as a support to them merely; it appears to have brought them forth at
the first; and it still assists in maintaining their successive
generation. Altogether there is ample evidence that the actual creation
presses towards and culminates in the production of sentient creatures,
and these as vast in variety of species and multitude of individuals as
the conditions of sentient existence in our planet will allow.
If it be said that, in order to make our argument of any avail in
theodicy, it would need to be so ordered in creation that a state of
well being in a sentient creature should be a state of enjoyment to
that creature also, we admit the legitimacy of the argument. Nay, we
accept it gladly; for nothing is more certain than that such is the
fact in the actual creation. A state of well being in every creature
ever tends to be a state of enjoyment to that creature. Every sentient
creature, when itself normally organized and placed in the midst of its
proper environments, enjoys its existence. If human creatures too often
supply exceptions to this rule, it is only because the conditions of
mans happiness have, in a great measure, been committed to his own
keeping, and he has not kept these conditions.
CHAPTER III.
COSMICAL LAW.
The fulness of the Godhead does not forbid a creation. But it
excludes from creation certain classes of objects; nay, it assigns
contents to creation viewed in reference to eternity. It admits of
infinite variety; but it excludes all that would be quite new and
singular. No such thing is possible. Whatever is not self-contradictory
or self-destructive is already anticipated, has already a place from
eternity in the Divine mind, either as knowing or being.
ASSIMILATION.
In the Divine mind there must exist the archetype of everything
that is possible. Created substance can only be a mirror which shall
reflect, or a luminary that shall radiate, or a treasury that shall
dispense the glory and the wealth of the Infinite.
Both in Being and action, therefore, created substance must be
essentially assimilated or assimilative. It must be essentially
assimilative to the Divine idea which proposes it for existence; and,
when actually created, it must be assimilated to that idea, so far as
harmony with the other Divine ideas in the same field, that is, the
action of its environments, permits.
But to be assimilated and assimilative is to exist and to act
according to law; for the idea of law is that of obedience or
conformity in acting where the command or conditions of existence are
the same. Now the Creator, both in His Being and His attributes, is
immutable. And He is as perfect in intelligence as He is in power. His
mind and will are ever at one. And we may be sure that He will never
put forth His will except in those directions which His intelligence
suggests or sanctions. He will never ordain any Being or any thing to
act contrary to the nature which He has awarded to that Being or thing;
nay, inasmuch as that nature is the expression of His own mind and will
in reference to that Being or thing, He will ordain that it should act
according to that nature; or rather, in awarding to it that nature, He
has, no doubt, appointed and provided that it shall act in accordance
with that nature; in other words, He has, no doubt, appointed that the
nature or constitution of a being or thing shall also give and be the
law of its acting.
Now, it has been shown that the nature of created substance is
Assimilative. To this nature, therefore, it will certainly conform. The
law of its Being therefore, the law of all finite Being, must be
"Assimilation."
Moreover, Assimilation, when viewed in all its possible influences,
while it is the cosmical law, must be the only one. For since the unity
of the Creator is as perfect as His intelligence and His power, there
can be no doubt that the cosmos, however multiple it may be in our
eyes, is yet in the mind of the great Creator, but one grand idea
realized. All cosmical laws, therefore, must in their ground be but one
law. And from what has already appeared, it follows that law must be a
law of Assimilation.
Yes; as all creation is, and cannot but be, the manifestation of
the attributes of the Creator, which on their part are the harmonious
manifestation of His being which is an unity, so must the whole cosmos,
however vast and varied, be a harmony, having as its ground an unison.
And the relation between the two must ever be this,-that the plastic
material shall ever tend to assimilate itself to the archetype; the
finite ever tend, so to speak, to emulate the Infinite. And in so
doing, surely it cannot but be good and beautiful, because of the
nobleness of the aspiration; but yet we can scarcely expect that it
will be without a mixture of failure or evil, because of the
impossibility of a wholly successful accomplishment of the undertaking.
INDIVIDUATION.
In contemplating the grounds on which a creation becomes probable,
the grounds on which reason can justify to itself the existence of
Nature as a work of God, we have found as an absolute condition the
awarding of existence to such beings at any rate as shall be sentient
and capable of enjoyment, and which, therefore, must be
individualities, or self-contained beings,-in some sense true unities
or monads. Nay, we have found that the glory of a creation, so far as
can be discovered by us, must consist in the multiplication, to the
utmost degree possible of such individualized Beings; for in the very
degree to which there is multiplication of sentient Being, supposing
the conditions of their well being provided at the same time, there is
multiplication of enjoyment; and enjoyment, so far as we can conceive,
is an object worthy enough to be proposed for awarding existence. Not
but universal order is worthies aim than individual enjoyment, and
self-sacrifice for the restoration or advancement of order worthier
than self-gratification when it involves a compromise of order; but
these things are so, only because universal order is the condition of
such enjoyment as shall be general and of the highest kind. In the
unfathomable depths of the ocean of possibilities there may perhaps be
something that is more valuable than enjoyment; but it is certain that
we cannot conceive such a thing, and never could be brought to vote in
its favour. The permanent enjoyment attaching to an action or a state
of being, or ultimately resulting from it, is, in fact, the only
measure by which we can estimate the value of such action or state, or
indeed of anything whatever. If all were perfect apathy, all would be
without any value to us.
But it is here needful to be remarked, that, as to the whole amount
of enjoyment attaching to an act or line of conduct, we are not
competent to estimate it. Nor are we called upon to do so, nor even
permitted to attempt it. In human nature, in its normal state, the
promptings of sensibility are sheathed in the consciousness of
obligation. In consequence of the seeming claims of the present and the
near, as compared with those of the future and the distant, the
prompting of sensibility constantly tend to mislead in the pursuit of
happiness. In this pursuit, therefore, it has been appointed that the
prompting of sensibility shall be superseded and left without sanction.
A sense of right and wrong has been provided as the guide of life.
But it ought never to be forgotten that the interest of sensibility
and of moral obligation are intimately and ultimately, at least, if not
immediately or always, in the most perfect harmony. In fulfilling the
law of moral obligation, it is impossible to violate the law of
sensibility, viewed as a cosmical institution. When the aged saint in
the Scottish cottage was overheard in her devotions using words to the
effect, that if the holiness of God required that pardon should not be
extended to so great a sinner as she felt herself to be, still she
could not cease to pray that in the place of punishment, some retired
spot might be permitted her, where she might not be exposed to hear the
holy name of the God, whom she loved, blasphemed;-this glorious homage
to the law of order or holiness(whish is the same), was not a violation
of the law of sensibility, much less was it a contempt of it. Though
nothing was farther from her thought, yet her prayer in reality implied
that a place appointed for suffering might, notwithstanding, be to her
a place of enjoyment,-that the hell of the wicked might, nevertheless,
be a heaven to her. And, indeed, how could it ever be otherwise? Order
or holiness on the one hand, and well being or happiness on the other,
are intimately and abidingly co-ordinate.
In proposing the enjoyment of creatures, therefore, as the motive
to creation in so far as that creation itself is concerned, we do not
conceive a lower order of motive. On the contrary, law and order are to
us valuable only as the safeguards of enjoyment. In spite of all
thinking that looks elsewhere, or seeks for other terms, happiness must
be the haven and Sabbath of our thought, the last word among all the
reasons which could possibly be assigned by us for the awarding of
existence to a creation. But enjoyment implies individuality. The
multiplication of enjoyment implies the multiplication of
individualities. And hence, we are to look in the cosmos for a
powerfully operating law of individuation, or of the partitionment of
being, supposing being to be previously or at any time undivided.
UNIFICATION.
But from the presiding unity of the Creator, and the assimilative
character of created being, it follows that individuation of
partitionment must have its limits; nay, it follows that there must be
another cosmical operation in quite another direction. Supposing
created Being to be now existing in multitude, there must be an
operation tending to reduce the number of unities in that multitude,-in
a word, to reduce that number until these two opposite tendencies-that
to individuation on the one hand, and this to confluence and
unification on the other - are in equilibrio. This is so plain that it
needs no further words.
Such, then, are the cosmical laws which our theory of nature, as a
creation of an infinite and perfect Creator, suggests to us. As they
have presented themselves, they are three in number. But we shall find,
as we proceed, that they are one in their ground, and that the law of
Assimilation gives both the other two, which, while they are its
offspring, are also manifestations of it.
CHAPTER IV.
FINITE BEING.
The foregoing laws lead us to anticipate the existence of created
reality, not as one, but as many, with a continual play between greater
and lesser in point of number. But here the question occurs. What shall
we think of reality, when regarding it in its most comprehensive point
of view? Shall we say, with some, that it is merely the aggregate of
all its attributes, and nothing more? Or shall we say, with others,
that it is the substance in which its attributes inhere? Our views as
to the constitution of consciousness prompt us to decline taking either
side in this controversy, and to attempt rather to reduce these
seemingly conflicting views to an unity. Now, such an unity we find in
the conception of reality as a potentiality, a something to which it
belongs to develop itself into action, but which is such, that in so
doing it does not exhaust itself. Every other conception of reality
will be found to be quite unprofitable in philosophy. But on this
subject I shall not enlarge, especially after what has been said on the
subject already, when treating of consciousness.
More important it is to take into consideration the question
whether there are in creation beings which are radically dissimilar to
each other, or, as we might say, dissimilar both in attribute and in
substance; or whether created reality, in what variety soever it may
manifest itself, is yet in its ground universally one and the same?
Now here it is to be hoped at least that the latter opinion will
ultimately prevail; for if the former, then the cause of philosophy and
science is hopeless. If there be in creation beings and things more of
fewer, which are radically dissimilar, then there can be nothing better
for intelligence to learn than empirical facts and empirical laws. In
that case, an intellectual system of the universe which surely is the
proper aim of philosophy and science, can never be construed in the
mind.
But in defence of this hypothesis of essentially heterogeneous
being and things, it may be asked with seeming cogency how, on the
supposition of only one kind of being or reality in its ground, can we
possibly account for phenomena so diverse as those of matter and of
mind? Now, for a long time, it must be admitted, this identification,
even as to a common ground, was deemed in philosophy to be impossible.
The essence of matter, it was said, is extension; the essence of mind
is thought; and between these two-extension and thought-there is no
common term, nor is there any possibility of bringing them to an unity.
But that phase of philosophical thinking has now passed away; and
though men in general still feel that body and soul are a complete
contrast, yet physiologists in general are now of another mind. They
have run into the opposite extreme. The turn of modern thought is not
only to bring body and mind into most close relationship with each
other, but to identify them even as substance and attribute. And, what
is certainly very remarkable, all things considered, is that in
proceeding to identify them, many make Body the ground of mind, and the
only reality in the case! Perhaps even the majority of physicists and
physiologists in the present day regard mind merely as a function or
phenomenon,-merely as the outcome and manifestation of the physical
forces, co-operating under certain conditions, - merely as an ideal
efflorescence of the nervous system, and nothing more. To many the
whole universe is a purely mechanical system, and, according to the
view, all philosophy and science ought to be merely the exposition of
an all-pervading, everywhere prevailing materialism, and nothing more.
At the same time it is not denied-it cannot be denied-that mental
attributes or phenomena are of a much higher order than material
properties and phenomena; that volition, for instance, or
self-directive power, the VIS VOLUNTATIS, is a much higher attribute
than mere inertia, or the VIS INERTIAE; that desire and aversion felt
towards objects are higher attributes than mere attraction or
repulsion; that self-preservation is higher than mere resilience or
elastic action; that an idea is of a higher order than a form or
diagram in space; and that thought is higher than mere motion in space.
In a word, it is not denied, and it cannot be, that mental functions
and phenomena generally, are of a higher order than merely mechanical
functions and phenomena. Supposing there to be in its ground only one
kind of substance, then the question between spiritualism and
materialism is this,-Are we to suppose that the higher birth gives also
the lower, or that the lower gives birth to the higher?
Of these alternatives spiritualism affirms the former. It posits,
as the basis of all philosophy and science, the existence of a supreme
Mind, and does its best (what, indeed, it has done as yet only
indifferently well) to show, in the relation of matter to mind, that
matter is something quite subordinate to mind, and incapable of
attaining, under any circumstances, to the attributes and phenomena of
mind. Materialism, on the other hand, sets out with matter and force,
as the first of all things, and holds that mental phenomena come into
existence among material phenomena for the first time when physical
forces succeed in constructing nervous systems. Such is materialism. It
is impossible to exaggerate its consequences if it ever should become
the popular belief, for it annihilates at once all the hopes and all
the fears connected with a life hereafter. If it be a mistake, it is
the greatest of all possible mistakes. Happily it exists in opposition
to a world-wide belief. What, then, let us ask, is its scientific claim
to regard? Now, to this it is to be answered that positively it has
nothing to support it but the fact, that mind can be observed by us
only in connection with brain, and that it is apparently proportional
in value to the value of the brain with which we find it associated.
Materialism exists in direct opposition to scientific principle. The
science of mechanics can prove that every possible combination of
mechanical forces must have a mechanical resultant which is truly and
fully the representative of that combination of forces. Exact science
gives no opening at all for such a conception, as that at some moment
when the combination of forces has become complicated to a certain
extent a transformation takes place of mechanical force into feeling
and thought. Such a transformation is besides utterly inconceivable. If
it took place, the law of continuity would be completely violated. One
thing would arise out of another thing which has nothing in common with
it at all. The objections to materialism in a scientific point of view
are insurmountable. The only way of getting rid of them is to exclude
them, to affirm that we know nothing at all about the matter, and, as
the ground of materialistic belief, to fall back upon the well-known
fact, that mental phenomena are seen only in connection with a cerebral
organization, and thence to conclude, that they are appearances merely,
and that the brain is the thing, the only thing.
But this is an inference which is confessedly made wholly in the
dark. Here one thing is concluded from another as its direct and
immediate sequence, when for aught that is known there may be many
links between. Nay, this inference is made, not in the dark only, or in
complete ignorance of the contents of the field in which it is made,
but it is contrary to the teachings of physiology in all cases that are
in any degree analogous. This is, indeed, implicitly affirmed by the
materialist himself, when he maintains (as has been referred to, p.27)
that the brain secretes thought just as the liver secretes bile. All
the other glandular structures give peculiar secretions, each its own.
All these secretions are merely molecular or material, no doubt, but
all of them are things of the highest synthesis, and consist of the
most composite molecules. As to the womb with its appendages, whose
morphological analogy to the brain (or rather, to the
myo-neuro-cerebral system) is of all the organs the most perfect, it
has for its function to cherish and to develop an embryo, which is
something of a much higher order than a molecule, or a gall-bladder
full of bile, or the like. In order to place the cerebral organism,
therefore, in analogy with glandular organism in general, the brain
also ought to have for its office to cherish and to develop some Being
or thing distinct from itself and having a substantive existence. Nor
does it follow of necessity that that creature of the brain shall, like
the secretions of the glands, or the creature of the womb, be merely a
molecular aggregate, a liquid or solid, and either amorphous or
organized. All the secretions, and indeed all the functionings of the
animal organism, are but means to an end; and that end manifestly is
the construction of the nervous system viewed as operating in the
fulfillment of its special office. Were it wonderful, then, if that
fulfillment implied the giving to material nature a Being or thing of a
higher order than the merely molecular and material? Were it wonderful
if the molecular synthesis, which we see to be so powerfully operative
in all the other glands, should be so much more powerful in the brain,
that instead of effecting the placing of elements of force in
juxtaposition merely, it should be able to effect their confluence into
a new unity, so that in the focus of action of the myo-neuro-cerebral
system, existence should be awarded, through the action of the brain,
to a new centre of force, constituted of so great an amount or
intensity of being or potentiality, that it should be wholly
emancipated from those trammels which characterize matter, and manifest
those higher properties of perception, volition, consciousness, for the
sake of which creation exists, and which we hold to belong to all
individualized Beings, when the quantity of Being or potentiality which
constitutes them has not been weakened by attenuation to such a degree
that instead of mental endowments, there are left only those residua of
power which constitute the properties of matter-namely, instead of a
VIS VOLUNTATIS, a VIS INERTIAE merely; instead of desire, attraction
merely; instead of aversion, repulsion merely, and so on?
And here let it not be hastily inferred that such a theory implies
the transformation of matter into mind. There is every reason to
believe, as will appear more fully hereafter, that the material element
possesses such self-conservative force, that it is wholly permanent in
nature, at least in and around our planet. It is not in the molecular
or ponderable parts of the brain that the material is to be sought
which may possibly be the mother element of the mind. That ponderable
matter is indeed everything to the anatomist. But to the natural
philosopher, to the true physiologist who endeavors to take an
all-embracing view of the contents of the field which he is
investigating, that ponderable matter is a mere scaffolding for the
ætherial matter that is present, the matter of light, in which the mind
really dwells, and by which we should expect that it would be fed and
constituted. Now, in the ætherial element, Being or Reality is so
attenuated, compared with what it is in the material element, that its
potentiality in general, and consequently its self-conservative power,
or its resistance to confluence, and its incapacity for constituting a
true unity of a higher order, must be much less than it is in the
material element; and, for anything that appears to the contrary, its
individuality may be overcome by an adequate synthetic apparatus such
as the myo-neuro-cerebral.
By this view, which we maintain has the analogy of all nature in
its favour, that fact which is the only one that gives countenance to
materialism is adequately explained-namely, the fact that there is an
observed co-ordination of mental phenomena with the organization and
the actual functioning of the brain; for while the power and the
perfection of the mother and nurse will normally be expressed in the
power and perfection of the child, the law of reciprocal assimilation
provides, that during the whole period of organized life, mind and body
shall be continuously assimilating, each itself to the other, and thus
producing that interdependence and sympathy which is so universally
felt and acknowledged. And in order to every outward manifestation of
mind there will be the necessity that the currents in the brain shall
be duly circulating-a condition on which so much has of late been built
in the interest of materialism.
By the view now advanced all the phenomena are explained much more
fully and intelligibly than they are attempted to be explained by
materialism; and thus the ground is taken away from under the feet of
that detestable hypothesis which excludes from the field of science
altogether, and refers to an exercize of faith merely, a belief in God,
in merit, in immortality, in all that is most ennobling in the thoughts
and most encouraging to the aspirations of humanity.
Nor does the view which has now been suggested demand any
supposition as to the nature of Being in general, or of any Being in
particular more elaborate than this, that power as it is known to
exist, endowment in the individual, is always porportional to the
amount or intensity of the substance or potentiality constituting that
individual. And is not this a conception so simple that it, in fact,
possesses the value of a mathematical equation?
According to this conception, we obtain a system of Beings which,
commencing as near as we can reach the throne of the great Creator
(which is yet at an infinite distance)--gives us a hierarchy of
spiritual Beings ranging from the highest that is compatible with a
finite nature, through all orders downwards until we reach the region
where all mental endowments have vanished, and Being is found in the
most attenuated, and consequently the most diffused state, viz, in the
universal æther.
If it be asked, as at this stage of our progress it might be with
seeming cogency, why, in being partitioned and individualized in order
that the number of centres of enjoyment might be multiplied, should
finite Being have been attenuated in the individual to such a degree
that ultimately the individual is no longer capable of feeling, and
thus the very end aimed at be frustrated by overdoing,-the answer is,
that the cosmical law of assimilation insists on this result,
providing, however, at the same time, that after this extreme analysis,
sensibility shall be restored by a coordinate synthesis. The great
Creator is infinite as well as absolute. He has for an attribute
immensity no less than unity; and immensity, when construed in
consciousness and in reference to finite Being, is represented by all
space-boundless space. Finite Being, therefore, in assimilating itself
to the Infinite, needed as far as possible to fill all space. But being
finite, this it could do only by undergoing the utmost attenuation
possible. Hence, according to our theory, the universal æther, all
apathetic though in itself it be.
But, shall this extreme attenuation of being be regarded as an evil
or a departure from the interests of sensibility? No, surely. The
universal æther is the medium of light and color, and all visible
glory, and we know not how many genial influences besides. Moreover, in
it our philosophy, while admitting a hierarchy of Spirits, provides at
the same time for them a medium in which they may dwell, than which we
know not of any, and can conceive none that could be more kindred or
congenial.
As to the material element and the molecular world, it presents
itself as the development of a mathematical necessity; not on that
account, however, outcast, or useless in the economy of the universe,
but, on the contrary, a beautiful episode in the epic of creation,
appointed as an apparatus for redeeming, so to speak, or for bringing
back Being or Reality from its most attenuated and powerless state to a
state of power,-in a word, for restoring the ætherial to the spiritual,
giving life to light. But of that hereafter.
Created Being, then, according to our philosophy, is neither
"nothing," nor yet is it "that which fills space." But it is an
extensively self-manifesting something existing in multitude, the
individuals constituted by a greater or a lesser amount, or intensity
of Being or substance, whence it results that in the higher orders of
Being self-manifesting power becomes two-fold, acting both outwardly
and inwardly, or reflectively, thus rendering the individual
self-manifesting to self, that is, a Spirit. If it be said that the
term spirit implies more than this, more than consciousness, namely,
life and liberty, we add, that to us created Being is in no case that
which is dead or wholly inert, in no sense that which shall be a clog
upon the infinite (which, however, seems to be the common notion). To
us, created Being is in itself like the Creator, power, life, free
life, only it is not left to itself in the unguided play of such a
dangerous nature. It is placed either altogether, or more or less,
under cosmical law that is under the Divine Attributes radiating, the
voice of God echoing, and embodying itself in space and time, and thus
constituting creation a cosmos. And now as to spirit much requires to
be said.
CHAPTER V.
SPIRIT: ITS NATURE
AND ENDOWMENTS.
When treating of consciousness something was said of Beings of the
order of spirits. But at that stage of our development nothing could be
said of the cosmical laws. At that time we were able to speak of Beings
as self-manifesting things only, and that to a distance from their
centres, or more generally as extensively impressive and impressible
centralized powers. We know now more than this. We know now that
inasmuch as all reality is the creation of an all-Perfect Creator, it
can neither exist nor act in a manner which is wholly singular or
anomalous. It can only exist or act so as to manifest and be
assimilated to the Creator, and be the expression of His mind and will,
or if it be an individualized power, or will, then possibly in a
contrary way. And hence the cosmical law which we have already laid
down. Hence assimilative action the law of the cosmos, considered as
such.
And here a primary inquiry presents itself. If the law of
assimilation is the very order of the created universe, shall we not
have an order of Beings which shall be fully expressive of that law-an
order of Beings, in a word, which shall be the image of God in the
whole of His Being, in so far as the finite can image the Infinite?
Such an expectation certainly finds a first place in our theory. Now
for its discussion it first asks the question, What is that special
condition which shall make a Being to be the image of God? What is that
attribute which, being withdrawn from a Being, that Being shall cease
to be the image of God? Now, to this the answer undoubtedly is,-the
possession of truly individualized power, that is, a potentiality or
energy within itself, which shall be a Cause in its own right, and see
its own way, that is, a principle of volition, in one word, a person.
If we deny this of God, we deny God Himself in that sense of the name
which all humanity claims to be the true sense; and if we deny it of
man, we deny man himself in that character which the consciousness in
the breast of every man affirms man to be.
This, then, when we descend from the Creator to the creation, we
find to be the first order of Beings which we are to look for in the
cosmos-an order of Beings, namely, possessed of truly individualized
power more or less, that is, free will or liberty.
But how, it may here be legitimately asked, can we suppose that
existence should ever be awarded or permitted to Beings of such a
nature? Is it not, may be said, of the very essence of liberty to
resist a law imposed from without? And thus, if there were Beings in
the image of God, must not these Beings, in virtue of the very make of
their minds, be rebels against God, and, in a word, be as gods
themselves? This is a grave question, and it suggests many thoughts,
and explains many things. But we have here only to affirm that such an
issue is not necessary or unavoidable. Thus, in the constitution of
such liberty as is true and perfect so far as it goes, there is implied
the opposite of every tendency as well as the tendency itself. The
tendency to rebel, therefore, in a spirit which is perfectly free must
be accompanied by a tendency in quite an opposite direction. The same
actions or manner of life which, when viewed solely as expressions of
an external authority, awake the recoil of liberty, may, in another
point of view, become the free spirits own choice. The spirit,
enlightened by reason, and feeling, as a free spirit ever must, those
channels is which its life and liberty can flow most fully, may find
them, nay, is sure to find them in that order which the all-wise and
the Almighty Creator has appointed. The love or law of liberty,
therefore, in an enlightened spirit leads it directly to maintain the
cosmical order, to keep the appointed law. It is only when existing in
a state of ignorance that a free spirit tends to be rebellious. In the
argument against the existence of liberty in the creature, founded on
the native tendency of liberty to rebel against authority, there would
be cogency only if liberty had been bestowed without any provision
having been made for the enlightenment of the free spirit. But means of
enlightenment have been provided. The same Divine appointment, the same
law of Assimilation, in providing for those creatures, who should be
most fully entitled to the name of "the image of God," the dangerous
gift of liberty, provides also for the enlightenment and guidance of
their liberty certain principles, the principles of Religious and Moral
Obligation and Reason.
RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION.
God is at once a Perfect Intelligence and an Almighty Power; and
from this twofold consideration, in virtue of the law of assimilation,
there must result in man a twofold endowment, namely, REASON, the
impress on him of the Divine Intelligence and RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION, the
impress of the Divine Power.
Along with these (even as an ember of Deity itself) man has
liberty, and that in the position of spectator of all the IDEAS which
reason supplies, and all the DUTIES which obligation imposes. He is
free to ramble amongst them, and to make his choice.
The imminence of religious obligation in the mind of man when
existing in its normal relations, fully appears; but it also fully
appears that it must continue as an authority or feeling of obligation
merely, and cannot be developed into articulate ideas. We can easily
conceive how the Divine attributes could mirror themselves in the human
soul as ideas, as reason, or laws of belief; but we cannot conceive how
the Divine Being, or Power, could be represented in this way or
otherwise than as an abiding impress merely of that Power. Besides the
laws of belief, therefore, and the ideas of reason, there ought, under
the law of assimilation, to be in the mind an abiding impress of the
Being and Power of God.
Nor will the mind be altogether unconscious of that impress, or
altogether unaware of the source from whence it comes. As in all other
cases of synthetic relationship the soul, as herself a proper power,
must react. And what, in the midst of so much darkness and yet so much
power, can such reaction be but a determination in the soul towards
God-a fixed looking of the soul towards God, responsive, or, if not
actually responsive, uneasy to respond to the impress of Gods Being
upon her? And since that Being, so far as it is felt or known, must
give an impress of the Omnipotent, the Adorable, what, in terms of
consciousness, must the corresponding impression be but a conscious
obligation to God, a felt call by God to worship Him, and, in so far as
His will is discovered or conceived, to obey Him?
And thus our philosophy enables us to understand both the
universality of religion in the world, and the vast breadth and variety
that there are both in religious objects and observances. According to
this view, religion in its essence, and viewed apart from reason, must
manifest itself merely as a conscious obligation, an uneasiness to
worship. And, accordingly, we find that worship is universal. But when
acting alone, this native religiousness of the heart must manifest
itself as an obligation to worship merely. It does not and cannot give
the object of worship in His true character, that true character is
given in reason only, or by the aid of revelation. Hence in any
individual, or any race where reason is in abeyance, any object which
happens to interest the imagination will be assumed as an object of
worship. Religious obligation when acting analytically, will discharge
itself in Feticism, when acting synthetically, in Pantheism.
In proportion as reason is developed on the other hand, then, under
the law of the equivalence of energy, whatever its form, the sense of
religious obligation, the constitutional uneasiness to worship, will
tend to become feeble. But, at the same time, the object of worship
will be brighter and more glorious in a higher degree. The deliberate
contemplation of His glory ought, therefore, now normally to awake
adoration no less than the feeling of an obligation to be religious did
before. The practice of religion, therefore, ought not to abate as
mental culture or intellectual light advances. Only the motive to
worship will no longer be felt to be an instinct which it causes great
uneasiness not to gratify, but a free movement in the light of reason
and intelligence towards that which is seen to be most truly
love-worthy and adorable.
And thus we are clearly taught what the spirit of true religion is
from first to last. Its animating motive is no calculation of
self-interest or advantage either here or hereafter. However valuable
such motives may be, as leading ultimately to true religion, neither
the hope of reward nor the fear of punishment enters into true
religion. True religion in its essence is purely an assimilation of the
soul, a conformity to God, the adoring contemplation and culture in the
mind of the Glory of God expressing itself in a soul-delighting flow
towards communion with Him.
MORAL OBLIGATION.
In order to be enabled to place in juxtaposition those faculties in
man which are most nearly allied, let us here call to mind that not
only do God and the soul exist, but also the world or the universe.
Here, then, is a third Being or Power, and plainly it is one of great
potency. Under the law of assimilation it must needs act with great
influence upon the soul. The mind must tend to be impressed
constitutionally not only by a Divine, but by a cosmical assimilative
action. And of this action let us here ask what must be the general
character? It is commonly supposed in the present day that the external
world, in so far as the mind is concerned, exhausts itself in giving
sensations or perceptions of individual external objects. Now,
perception is no doubt a fine example of assimilative action, as we
shall soon see. But the perception of individual objects, one by one,
cannot exhaust the assimilative influence of the world as a whole. The
world as a whole, as an economy, and not a multitude of particular
objects merely, must act assimilatively, and as such must impress the
soul. Now the world in this point of view quite transcends knowledge.
Its assimilative action on the mind, therefore, cannot produce in the
latter clear and distinct ideas. It cannot produce an impression more
definite than that which results from the being of God, and therefore
nothing more definite than an uneasiness to fall in with the universe
so as to sustain it. In a word, the assimilative action upon the soul,
of the world as a whole, must produce feeling only, and that an
"obligation" to maintain its economy. And hence, as that economy is
liable to be grossly misconceived, we may have a Feticism in morals as
well as in religion. But even at the worst, all will not be utterly
wrong.
We may go a step further. Thus the economy of the world, even when
regarded as the universe, and in all its details, is undoubtedly
expressed accurately overhead by the idea of "Order." All the parts are
so adjusted to each other, and work so as to form one harmonious whole.
This the cosmical law of assimilation secures. The functioning of each
part is so adjusted as to perpetuate the being, nay, the well being of
the whole. The present is harmoniously interwoven with the past and the
future. Every object, when it is in its right place in nature is
kindred with its environments. The individual is a member of the
family. The family is a a member of the nation. There is a community,
and there ought to be a communion of nations. Each works in all and all
in each. A reciprocal assimilative influence operates universally. And
of this the expression in the consciousness of the human soul, when
that soul is in a duly impressible state, ought to be a sense of
obligation to observe, and, so far as in her lies, to maintain the
universal order from the impress of which she cannot escape, however
great the local disorder in the midst of which she may happen to be
placed at the time. Now, this consciousness which never ceases to
insist upon order as the right thing, when viewed in the face of the
fact that a man may, in virtue of the freedom of his will traverse and
violate it if he please, exists, and is named moral approbation. And
thus, under the law of assimilation, and assuming with all mankind the
existence of the World as well as that of God and of the Soul, along
with religious obligation, we find man the subject of moral obligation
also.
These two obligations are justly regarded as distinct and as
belonging to distinct spheres of duty. But they mutually support each
other, and are beautifully interwoven, and indeed agree in most of
their features. Thus, as in religious obligation the soul desires
simply to acquit itself of the duty called for, apart altogether from
consideration of reward or punishment, so in moral obligation does the
soul desire to acquit herself of her duties, cost what they may. Pure
morality is no less disinterested than true religion. Not that either
of them can possibly be realized without bringing in due time its own
reward along with it. The economy of the world, which implies a harmony
between the well being or the parts and the well being of the whole, is
so complete, that, when obeying the behests either of religious or
moral obligation, it is only in very exceptional cases that even the
individual permanently suffers. So deep-laid, indeed, is this harmony
between well-being and well-doing, whatever the inner motion of the
action, that let all the individuals in any community, or let all the
world, adopt as the end and aim of all their actions a true and
enlightened self-interest, and the general result will be the same as
if each acted purely from conscious obligation to do what is right,
without any view to his own advantage at all. But between the inner
life and character of the two classes of actions, or rather of actors,
there would be this difference,-that those who are acting from
interested motives only are, in so doing, selling their birthright as
the children of God, nay, as members in the brotherhood of humanity,
for a mess of private enjoyment which generally issues in
disappointment at last; while those who act from a sense of duty, in so
far as they acquit themselves aright, always find themselves strong and
happy at the time, and have nothing to fear from the future. And no
wonder; for they live in the light of Gods countenance, and move along
with the glorious tide of the universe; while the merely selfish man,
with many clouds overhead, is ever struggling against that tide
unconscious of its existence, and can swim in eddies only, which he
mistakes for the universe.
REASON.
We have already seen, when treating of consciousness, that there
belongs to a Being, when powerful enough to be free more or less, and
when constituting a member in the universe, the power of manifesting
itself to itself, and of knowing, to a certain extent at least, what
itself is. Hence, from the minds own substance and activity, there
results a knowledge of Being and Action, as also of Action arising out
of Being, and therefore there results a knowledge of Cause.
Hence, also, from the minds own identity, along with its life or
changefulness, there results a knowledge of identity and change, that
is, Identity and Difference; and so on.
But such knowledge must be of a most inarticulate kind, and would
be better named nascent than innate. If the mind had no other source of
knowledge but self, nothing could be distinctly conceived or truly
known by it. To be distinctly informed as to anything, the mind must be
informed from more sources than one. As in still water a ripple forms
only at the meeting of steams from different sources, so in the mind,
with regard to particular knowledge, more influences than one must
always concur in forming it; and the more these influences are similar
to each other, provided they come from different quarters, the more is
the resulting knowledge satisfactory.
It may, perhaps, be thought that such a statement stands in
opposition to Sir Isaac Newtons first rule of reasoning in philosophy,
which claims also the authority of Aristotle in its favour. That rule
is to the effect, that "we are to admit no more causes of natural
things, but such as are both true and sufficient to explain their
appearance." But in this announcement of the rule (though not in the
comment on it which Newton gives) this philosopher has saved philosophy
by the introduction into it of the term "true." Doubtless we are not to
admit more causes of natural things than such as are true. But, even
immediately after Newtons own day, by John Locke and others, and more
especially in our own day by Sir Wm. Hamilton of Edinburgh and others,
this rule, under the name of the Law of Parsimony, has been made to
assume a character which is wholly subjective, and which breaks loose
from nature altogether. Having found or fancied some hypothesis that
seems adequate as a cause for a phenomenon, we are told not to look for
any others-nay, to reject the claims and pretensions of all others. The
results of may own observation of nature is to the effect that no such
law, as a law of parsimony, exists. Instead of being guided by
parsimony, nature delights in dispensing her wealth, and in enriching
every object. To make sure of the fulfillment of her economy, in order
to realize her phenomena, she usually makes concurrent causes to bear
upon each, although, in ordinary circumstances, it may seem to us as if
one of these causes might have been sufficient. Further, lest any of
those which are brought into action should be frustrated, she has
usually other causes in reserve in the same field. Nature absolutely
scouts this supposed law of parsimony. That law would dictate, for
instance, that the venous system was adequate to account for the return
of the fluids of the body to the heart, but nature gives the lymphatic
system also; nay, in addition to this, a centripetal movement of the
fluids through the tissues, and in opposition to all obstacles. The law
parsimony would dictate that the sickliness of a plant, growing under
an umbrageous tree, was fully accounted for by want of sunlight, for
shadow alone would undoubtedly produce such sickliness. But to this
cause nature adds others-the consumption, for instance, both by the
foliage of the tree above, and by the roots beneath, of the carbonic
acid, ammonia, and moisture, which the sickly plant required, in order
to be in health. And so in other cases-perhaps in every case. Not only
are there those classes of causes which Aristotle long ago so happily
signalized, but there are concurrent causes of the same class; and the
limitation to knowledge, which the method of modern science is now
occasioning, are in no small measure owing to a neglect or exclusion of
this fact. Is any knowledge innate, or is it all the product of
experience? Such is the alternative which this law of parsimony
dictates. But nature recognizes no such question. The answer is, that
from the minds own Being and make, it acquires much of what may indeed
be entitled to the name of knowledge; but, in order to acquire its
knowledge, such as it is, the mind most be where it is. If the mind
were placed in solitude, out of all relations. and in outer darkness,
without previous experience, all thought and feeling would certainly
remain for ever at zero. The ideas which, independently of its
environments, exist for the mind, are like the veins in the marble
which is yet in the block. Practice, reflection, and experience, like
the sculptors chisel, are needed to bring them out, and then they
become distinct objects of thought.
But the case of a mind left altogether to itself need not be
considered by us. The mind never is, and never can be wholly alone. The
Being of God is always imminent. And as the mind, in virtue of its
intimate receptivity, is always undergoing assimilation either to
itself as it is, and thus affirming conscious identity, or reproducing
its former by acquired states, and thus remembering, &c., so must
it be always undergoing, more or less, according as its receptivity in
that direction is greater or less, assimilation to the Divine Being and
His attributes. It must be continually or constitutionally penetrated,
so to speak, with a nascent knowledge of the Omnipotent and the
Infinite, the Absolute and the Perfect. In a word, in virtue of the law
of assimilation, and the abiding presence at once of the soul to
herself, and of God to the soul, there must exist in the soul those
abiding modes of mental action which go by the name of First
Principles, Laws, belief, or, in one word, Reason. And that they are
justly entitled to the names of principles or laws fully appears from
the genesis, and the conditions of existence which we have assigned to
them. Thus they cannot but speak with authority; for they are supreme.
And they must eventually oust all others if they cannot be brought to
coexist harmoniously with them; for they are the most deeply seated,
and, in virtue of the imminence of their cause, they must be reproduced
as fast as they are obliterated or forgotten. They must, in short, be
characterized by that very authority and necessity which are ascribed
to the principle of reason or the laws of belief.
And now, by their aid, something like definite knowledge seems to
be possible, or rather, indeed, inevitable. This new manifestation of
Being, that of the Divine Being, which the soul acquires in virtue of
her position as living and moving, and having her Being in Him, must
enter into synthesis with that which the soul has from herself as
Being; and that synthetic holding in the synthetico-analytical rhythm
of the mind, being subjected to analysis, it appears certain that there
must be a differentiation of the idea of mere Being, indefinite Being,
into that of infinite Being on the one hand, and finite Being on the
other, with their respective attributes. There is reason for inferring
that the soul can now no longer escape from the conclusion that she is
herself a finite Being, while, at the same time, an infinite Being is
imminent. Happy for her if she feels the latter fact as strongly as she
ought! and can keep self in its own subordinate place. But usually,
alas! it is quite otherwise. Usually, almost unavoidably, self, the
EGO, as soon as it has acquired the consciousness of its own existence,
seats itself on the throne, and construes all things merely as its own
attendants. Its conclusions are no better than a travesty of things as
they are. "Man, the measure of all things," "Protagorus for ever," that
is the "ticket" for the day. The greater part of our so-called modern
science consists of this sort of thing.-But not so in the soul that is
sensitively alive to the glorious impress of the Omnipotent and the
Infinite. Not so in the adoring Spirit which, after and under the Great
Creator, loves all Being, and, that it may not be put to the pain of
denial, duly watches its own gates against the entrance of error.
IDEA.
But why should I avoid the term "idea," which is so constantly
employed in this field, and has been so constantly employed ever since
mental philosophy has had an existence? Certainly not, because such a
term, and the phenomenon which it denotes, are alien to our philosophy!
On the contrary, the universal function of our great cosmical law is
Assimilation, and what term could express better the corresponding
phenomenon than the term Idea? An idea, it is usually said, cannot be
an image of that of which it is the idea, though the term
etymologically considered implies as much. Now, according to our theory
of ideas, it need not be an image. In order to be an idea, it is enough
if it be an Assimilation of a kind appropriate to the object of which
it is the idea. It is certainly bold to affirm that in no case nor
sense whatever can an idea be an image. But in some cases, at least, it
certainly is not. It obviously is not in reference to the ideas which
belong to the sphere of Reason and Obligation, both religious and moral.
Thus our cosmical law of Assimilation finds ready made in the
language, both of philosophy and common talk, a term expressive of its
characteristic product in the spiritual world-namely, "idea." And the
soul, in virtue of her position in the universe, as ever in her own
presence, and ever in the presence of God, is put constitutionally in
possession of the idea of reason.
And here it might seem as if an articulate enumeration of these
ideas were desirable. But such an enumeration, in order to be
intelligible, would be possible only in relation to other ideas
acquired by the mind in virtue of its relation to the world around it.
And for such an enumeration, therefore, this is plainly not the place.
But the sooner we come to that place the better.
PERCEPTION.
Now, then, let us turn to those phenomena which are determined in
the mind by its mundane relations. And yet, while we do so, let us do
it with the greatest rapidity; for the mind is known to us only as
embodied, that is, specially invested by an individualized structure,
consisting of elements different from itself of which we as yet know
nothing, but of which the imminence to the mind is so intense, compared
with that of external nature, that a confusion, if not even a fusion,
of mental and bodily phenomena is to be apprehended, and, at any rate,
the reciprocity is so complete that an unraveling and a successful
analysis of it in the actual state of science is quite hopeless.
There are, indeed, what are named "the avenues of the senses," "the
five gates of knowledge;" and if they were true avenues and gates
merely, through which the self-manifesting power of external objects,
and the co-ordinate receptivity of the mind, could act and react
without obstruction, then under the law of Assimilation there would
result, as soon as object and subject came face to face with one
another, all that is implied by a clear and distinct perception of the
object looked at. The mind, in submitting directly, in so far as its
inner activity or personality would permit, to the assimilative
influence of the object (to whole sphere of assimilative action no
limit as to distance can be assigned), would be assimilated to that
object in a way which is accurately described, when it is said that the
mind would perceive that object, but which it is vain to attempt to
illustrate by mechanical constructions or imagery of any kind.
But such direct and simple perception is not possible to man in his
embodied state. There are obstacles in the way. The universal æther, at
all events, existing everywhere in the outward, as also in the axes of
the nervelets of sensation, if indeed they be clear of more gross
matter, is in the way; and when it is at rest, or acting otherwise than
according to a certain rhythm, it puts a stop to all perception of
external objects. In that case it acts with regard to the
self-manifesting power of such objects like an absorptive medium with
regard to light. But when, by an external object, its particles are
made to move rhythmically with certain forms and dimensions of motion,
it is an obstacle to their self-manifesting power no longer. In the
lines of such motion it is nearly, if not perfectly, transparent.
During the day distant objects, and during the night even the fixed
stars, manifest themselves to the human mind. That manifestation,
indeed, depending as it does on a mode of motion in the æther, cannot
take place otherwise than according to the laws of motion and
elasticity. It must, therefore, be always in perceptive, and a
projection merely of the true form of the object, not that true form
itself. In a word, it can be a symbolic manifestation only; and, in the
human species, it is only after many mistakes that the symbol comes to
manifest the real object to the mind. But, in other species which exist
from the first wholly in harmony with nature, and in which perceptivity
is not disturbed by the co-existence of an undetermined will-in those
species, for which a moral life is not designed, and which are endowed
from the first with ripe organs of sense, and instincts adequate to the
conditions of their existence,-the self-manifesting power of objects
reaches them immediately in its true characters. Witness a pheasant the
hour that it has escaped from the egg, run up with precision to a small
object which may be several yards distant from it, knowing that object
from the first to be suitable food; or witness a cobra-capella, just
set free by breaking the egg in which it was enclosed, immediately rear
itself up and offer battle to the hand that liberated it, with as much
ceremony, and strike with as much precision, as if it were an old snake
with effective fangs. Phenomena of this order are manifold all through
nature, and cannot be denied. Here, then, we have the function of
perception realized in a typical manner. Here we have the phenomena
exhibited in that form which ought to be regarded as cosmical-that is,
where the self-manifesting power or perceptibility of objects comes
face to face, and into immediate relation with the perceptivity of
living Beings, all the obstacles between being surmounted even as if
they were not in the way at all.
But, unhappily for the progress of philosophy, man has been taken
as the type-man of whom it has been jocularly, yet truly said, that he
enters upon life as "a born idiot," and whose organs of sense and whose
organism, it must be confessed, are so defective at first, that not
till after more than a year can be even balance himself in the most
elementary of all antagonisms, that of gravitation.
In man, therefore, as might be expected, the obstacles to the
distinct vision of objects immediately on their presentation are
insuperable. Nor that at the first only. That versatility and power of
imagining which is implied in the possession of liberty, expose man all
his life, when engaged in observing, to form misconceptions. The study
of perception in man, therefore, is beset with great difficulties, and
little has, indeed, been made of it as yet. Nor is science in its most
advanced state equal to the inquiry. Such an undertaking, in fact, if
it is to be successfully accomplished, implies both a full knowledge of
the æther and of its modes of action, of the material system and its
modes of action, and of the nervous system and its modes of action. But
of all these things science down to the present moment is profoundly
ignorant. We shall therefore merely glance at the phenomena as they
present themselves to a man in the full possession of his senses.
SUBJECT AND OBJECT.
First, then given an external object and a mind possessing adequate
impressibility or sensibility in the same field, synthesis immediately
takes place. It is not such a synthesis, however, as issues in the
fusion of both object and mind into one. On the contrary, both object
and mind have in individualized existence each its own, and this, the
self-assimilative and consequently self-conservative action of each
tends as its first function to maintain. Moreover, these realities now
standing face to face, that is, the mind and the external object, stand
opposite to each other as centres of reciprocally assimilative action.
They stand in a position of essentially antithetic action. And thus,
according to our theory, we obtain, as the primary condition of normal
intellectual action in the sphere of the finite, the distinction of
SUBJECT and OBJECT, or, in the language of consciousness, the "I" or
Ego, and the "not-me" or non-Ego.
POSITION AND SPACE ---- TIME AND
MOTION.
But this is not all that develops itself as proper to the same
state of mind. By an act of volition, while the attention continues
directed as before, the external object may be discharged or forgotten,
and the same direction may be thought, the object being away. And now
there manifests itself as a residuum in perception, as the pure or
empty complement of the object, a more articulate conception of an
outward than that which the mind has from itself merely-in a word, a
conception of space or place not now as a boundless infinity, but as
that which is limitable and divisible and capable of form.
And similarly, as an inner residuum, as the complement of the minds
changefulness, when every change in particular is put out of the way,
attention continued in this direction gives Duration, not now as the
symbol of eternity, but under the articulate conceptions of past,
present, and future. These intuitions, therefore, space and time, stand
on a basis that is both objective and subjective. No wonder they are
quite insuperable. No wonder they always present themselves when
nothing else is given to engage the minds eye, and thus to cause them
to be forgotten for the time.
But the mind cannot be in possession of such ideas as that of
space, considered as limitable and divisible, say the idea of position
or form, and that of duration, say past, present, and future, without
spontaneously compassing their synthesis. Now, of such a synthesis what
is the expression? Is it not plainly the idea of here and there with
transition but yet continuity between them? And what is this but the
idea of motion?
FORCE -- PHYSICS.
Now to these conceptions add power, which lies in our nature more
deeply seated than any of them, and we obtain that group of ideas of
which Physical Science is but the orderly development. No wonder, then,
that physical science in its fundamental ideas appears so certain and
so clear, and affords so much mental enjoyment. It has to do with those
ideas only which are most elementary, and which admit with the greatest
facility at once of intuition, of analysis and of synthesis, in a word,
of the full play of the mind; and to this, as has been shown,
intellectual enjoyment and satisfaction always attach, be the subject
what it may.
The radical evil of science in our day is a grievous misconception
of the nature of force in its ground, a misconception extending,
therefore, to the whole of the sphere of Reality. Force, even in its
original or rather aboriginal state and form, is considered at present
by the most popular advocates of science as thing all whose
manifestations may be expressed in measurable terms of space and time,
in other words, mathematically. Mental force is regarded merely as an
ultimate development or efflorescence from certain organisms of that
which is its ground is wholly bind and mechanical. Now, this is
precisely an inversion of the fact.
But happily there is reason to believe that this view of things
cannot last long. It has often taken possession of mens minds before.
The history of thought has fully shown its utter inadequacy to solve
the problems of philosophy. The essential theism of the human mind is
absolutely opposed to it. Let us hope that it will soon pass away as it
has done before, and that mental power will be resumed as the type, of
which mechanical force is the limitation designed for certain ends, and
effected, no doubt, in some manner that is simple and beautiful, though
what that is we have not come yet to consider.
SENSATIONALISM.
While the object is assimilating the mind to itself, the
assimilative action of that object is in a normal state of mental
action soon stopped by the inner activity proceeding from the mind in
an opposite direction. The EGO is constituted, and, in being
constituted, claims self-possession and identity as its inalienable
right. At the same time, some special form of consciousness due to the
external world is awoke, into which the EGO enters as a factor, and for
this in its various modes the names are--I see, I I hear, I smell, I
touch, I taste, &c. And thus do we reach the phenomenon of normal
sensations, corresponding to external objects. And it belongs to our
philosophy, in accordance with the absolute affirmations of common
sense, to hold that these sensations are produced by the objects
themselves, acting immediately upon the mind, and expressing
themselves, though badly, yet as well as they can, in terms of mind.
This, according to our views of the nature of objects, they may do,
since we ascribe to every object beyond its visible or tangible form an
extensiveness to which no limits in distance can be assigned. This
sphere of action, in the actual state of science, is admitted only in
reference to the gravitation of objects, but we hold it in reference to
other properties also, and especially their perceptibility, or
self-manifesting power. The prevalent hypothesis is that even when we
are directly observing an external object, and affirming, with all the
confidence of which we are capable, that we see it, hear it, smell it,
touch it, &c., yet we are in reality completely mistaken. The
prevalent hypothesis is, that it is only some sort of an image of it
that we see, such as that which is formed in the retina of a dead
animal when its eye is used as a camera obscura, that image being
connected on our part with its object only by practice and inference.
It is certain, however, in the case of percipients which are capable of
taking their place in nature as soon as they are born, that no practice
or experience whatever is necessary, in order to their distinct
perception of distant objects; and that not only as to their distances
and forms, but as to their specific relations to the individual
percipient. (See p. 87.) The evidence, also, that certain objects are
sometimes perceived otherwise than by the external senses, appears to
be insuperable. Common sense, which affirms in all unsophisticated
minds that external objects themselves are perceived, when construed
into a science of perception, as we have done, may, indeed, demand an
assent to more difficult conceptions than the image-theory; for the
latter has all the charm of a mechanical construction, and therefore
affords to the student a play of mind both in analysis and synthesis
which is always pleasing. But our view is surely worth the cost of
mastering it. In fact the idea-theory so completely knocks down common
sense in its own appropriate field, that field in which it believes
itself to be standing most firmly upon its feet, that it is impossible
to avoid the inference that if this be the way of it,-if consciousness
be mendatious even here, it is of no use to think about the discovery
of reality anywhere; for if what is most peremptorily given us as truth
and reality, is no more than a mere shadow (if indeed so much), and
that projected within the mind itself,--then truly "a possibility," or,
let us say, "some kind of orderly stimulus of sensations," is all that
we can ever know for certain of the external universe, as is indeed
frankly admitted by consistent sensationalists.
Holding fast, then, in the meantime, by common sense, whether we
suceed in developing it into a philosophy or not, let us proceed with
tracing the phenomena which must arise in the course of the action and
reaction of object and subject, under the ever recurring law of
assimilation. This, as will have been already perceived, is the
sheet-anchor of our philosophy, and to this law it must be admitted
that we are very faithful, since while all other works in modern
science and philosophy invoke the aid of many different laws, some
rational and some empirical, we avail ourselves of one only. Yes; and
by the action of one law only we undertake to explain all the phenomena
which we discuss.
Epochs
THE MYTHOLOGICAL EPOCH.
Under the law of assimilation the external object assimilates the
mind to itself. But to this the mind, in virtue of its own
individualized power, and the self-assimilative or conservative action
which this implies, puts a stop. And when there is an equilibrium, the
result is the just perception of the object, with the appropriate
sensations. But this equilibrium, and accurate distribution between
object and subject, is reached only after much swinging to opposite
sides, which, viewed in reference to the history of the human mind, are
epochs. And of these we may name the first swing, the epoch of
Mythology or poetry, and the last swing, that of mathematics, or
(adopting its own name for itself) Positivism.
While the object is assimilating the mind to itself, the mind, in
its turn, is assimilating the object to itself; and here, in the first
instance, in virtue of the treasures of life that there are in the
mind, feelings and views well out of it fast, and rise in the mind in
quite a cloud, and then they surreptitiously fly forth, and cluster
around, and cling to, pierce and house themselves, and find a home in
the objects beheld-nay, possibly, in the very names merely which recall
the objects.
To what extent, and whether to any extent, in reference to certain
objects at least, the mind can actually assimilate these objects to
itself, we shall probably never know, because the objects referred to
have no eye within to observe, nor though they had an eye, have they a
tongue to tell us what is happening to them. In some cases, indeed,
assimilations to mind are obvious. But these so generally take place
through the somatic investiture, that nothing can be here affirmed on
this subject that would not be open to criticism. But what tends to
happen in the observers own mind at the time when his mental power is
flowing out upon objects may be ascertained, and in fact is well known.
It is well known that the mind tends to assimilate the object to
itself, to animate it, to invest it with thought and feeling, and to
find in it all that there is in self. The contemplation of nature, as a
whole, tends to be a communion with the Great Spirit; and of individual
objects in nature, a communion with spirits more or less kindred with
self. Science to a mind in this state is as yet all and only a
mythology. And so it is in children, and glowing hearts such as those
of young mothers, even in this iron age.
And thus does our theory fully account for an epoch in the
development of the human mind, which manifests itself both in history
and in the now extant world n the position which our theory assigns to
it.
THE POSITIVE EPOCH.
However strong the tendency of the mind at first to assimilate all
nature to itself, it is found ere long that, in the main, nature is not
assimilable; nay, that it rather stands in opposition to self. Thus is
the EGO called upon to subject to a destructive criticism its own first
views respecting the NON-EGO. It enters, in fact, upon a period of
reaction against the poetic and mythic view of nature, in the embrace
of which it had lived happy for the time. And during that epoch it was
not more fully bent on finding the free movements of life everywhere,
than it is now bent on referring every motion to straight lines, and
measuring them all according to some mathematical power of the distance
from their origin. It was not formerly more fully bent on finding that
all was the expression of mind, than it is now bent on finding that all
is mere machinery, revolving machinery indeed, but still only a
revolving stereotype press, into the origin, design, or destiny, of
which it is held to be vain to inquire, inasmuch as human thought,
though it persistently equals itself to such inquiries, is merely
printed matter thrown off by that machinery so badly composed as to be
incorrigible.
Thus does the mind, in virtue of its two-fold constitution in
consciousness, its synthetico-analytical rhythm, tend to swing at
first, nay, from first to last, into one or other of two extremes; now
merging the material world in mind, and creating a world of mythology
and poetry; now merging mind in the material world, and affirming all
things to be a mere display of applied mathematics. Both views are
equally subjective, both are at once defective and exaggerated. Both,
therefore, are to be avoided, and which the two most, we may leave the
reader to determine for himself. Happily there is something within
reach, the balance of both, which is better than either.
THE SCIENTIFIC EPOCH.
When the mental activity has fixed itself on an object, then there
is that most important state of mental functioning which usually bears
the name ATTENTION, and when existing in its most sustained and intense
form, APPLICATION. Its fixedness is so far contrary to the nature of
the mind, which is essentially active or changeful, that it needs to be
sustained by an act of the will. But this it can be, at least after
adequate practice and in those who have the aptitude, to an almost
indefinite extent. Now, out of this frame of mind it is that all great
discoveries have come. But whether these are of the nature of births in
the mind, to which the object contemplated is merely the stimulus, or
whether they are not happy views given by the object of itself, is not
agreed. Application is, therefore, altogether invaluable.
It is however, equally to be considered that it is from the over
forcing and misdirection of application that all partial views and most
errors take their rise. This faculty, therefore, is the source at once
of the greatest good and of the greatest evils.
How, then, it may be well asked, ought attention to be regulated;
or rather, let us say, what is its normal state in relation to the
presentation of an object with which it is co-ordinate? Now, to this
the answer certainly is,-that given an object of attention, there ought
in a perfectly normal state of things to be no putting forth of an
effort of the will to interfere with the true spontaneity of the minds
action one way or another. The whole mind in the synthetico-analytic
mode of action which the presentation of the object awakes in it, ought
to be left to bestow itself upon that object without any interference
of the part of the EGO. And in ordinary perception, by the use of the
senses, such a state of things is usually secured. But in the sphere of
reflection no discipline is more difficult, if indeed it be attainable
by culture at all. And hence interminable speculation and no end of
partial views. Hence, also, abundance of invested views, in which
subjective is put for objective, and VICE VERSA. Hence, in a word,
endless error.
But the method of reaching the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, however difficult it may be practically to compass it,
is not of difficult statement. It is plainly to the effect that
Synthesis(the-object-holding-capacity) shall supply new food for the
perceptivity as fast as Analysis (or attention) assimilates or comes to
understand what has presented itself already. For then, things will be
received, understood, and retained in the mind in their true relations;
and the mind, when acquiring ideas, will be kept diligent, and not be
permitted to break off and speculate AD LIBITUM, as in virtue of its
egotism an empty mind ever tends to do.
Supposing the normal order as described above to have been observed
from first to last, then, in reference to the object in hand, mental
action comes to a close in an accurate and at the same time a clear and
distinct perception of that object. And on the retrospect of what has
been done, it will be seen that the mind has accomplished three phases
of action, or rather, indeed, has completed one, that has been cut in
upon and modified by another, which occupied the middle period, and
thus so far partitioned the one into three. The first is pure
synthesis, in which the object strikes the mind in its totality, but at
the same time all in confusion. It therefore causes in the mind
embarrassment and consequent uneasiness; for the mind has lost its
liberty or power of rambling among objects without gaining any such
clear and distinct view of the object which has fixed it, as would
allow of a play of its activity in analysis and synthesis upon that
object. Urged by this uneasiness, therefore, and in that EXPECTATION of
relief which uneasiness always awakes, the mind enters on its second
phase. In this it does not exclude the object presenting altogether.
That it has not power to do. The law of assimilation insists upon its
continuing to hold the object to some extent. But it excludes it all
save some single point. And in this it finds relief, especially if on
that point it bestows itself until it has come to understand it; for
the glare, the confusion of the original presentation, has been reduced
to a point. Then the mind moves to another point, and bestows itself
upon it. And thus it finds a play for its activity, and, consequently,
a measure of relief in moving from point to point of the object
presenting; and so on until the whole of that object has been surveyed.
This accomplished, that is ANALYSIS COMPLETED, nothing remains to
restrict the original synthetic holding of the object. That object,
therefore, now again occupies the mind wholly as it did at first. But
there is a great difference in the view which the mind now takes of the
object, compared with what it took at first. The object is now no
longer a thing of confusion and a cause of uneasiness to the mind. It
is lighted up with intelligence, and affords a field for the full and
free play of the intellect upon it. The mind as a member in the
universe holds the object in synthesis, and as an individual it hold it
in analysis. The minds relations and its functions in reference to the
object are fulfilled. The uneasiness, therefore, with which it regarded
the object at first, has been displaced by intellectual enjoyment (for
enjoyment is always either the companion or the reward of natural
conditions fulfilled). Science has taken the place of ignorance, and
phenomena have been referred to mind or to matter according to their
true parentage.
RETENTION.
But we have already anticipated a mental phenomenon which cannot
but be of the greatest value and significance. The mind having been
once assimilated to a variety of objects by the presentation of these
objects, is no longer precisely what it was before. It has acquired a
new state, a new mode of Being. The EGO has, indeed, all along remained
in possession of itself. But it has, at the same time, been put in
possession of many assimilation by external objects. Nor does any
reason appear why such assimilations once effected in the mind should
ever after wholly vanish. On the contrary, no sooner does any
individualized thing, such as one of the assimilations referred to,
come into existence, but under the law of assimilation, it is invested
with a VIS INERTIAE, a self-assimilative, that is, a self-conservative
power.
Thus must the mind have in store two classes of ideas. They may be
severally distinguished as the one CONSTITUTIONAL and the other
INCIDENTAL; the former depending on a continuous presence or
presentation, viz., that of God to the soul, and that of the soul to
herself, and constituting reason; the latter depending on the
occasional presentation of surrounding objects, and constituting the
materials of experience.
Will the latter then, let us ask, be liable to re-present
themselves to consciousness from time to time in a rambling and merely
chaotic manner? If so, surely they will be a greater inconvenience than
an advantage. But no; against such a state of things the law of
assimilation amply provides.
MEMORY.
In the absence or non-observation of external objects, and during
the neglect of the ideas of reason, when, in short, the mind is is a
vacant state, it must at such seasons bestow its assimilative action
upon itself. It must tend to assimilate its existing state to some
former state; and thus it must tend to bring up into consciousness the
formerly acquired ideas now in store. Nor will these ideas tend to come
up spontaneously in disconnected groups, unless they have been
previously disjointed by special analysis. They will obviously tend to
come up, cohering in those very groups in which they originally
impressed the mind and were received as unities in it. And thus when
all is spontaneous, and the present is no more to the mind than the
past, there will be the phenomenon of living in the past. And when the
present is taken and held as the principal point of view, there will be
the phenomenon of remembering and the exercise of memory.
CONSECUTION (LEIBNITZ). --- THE
INDUCTIVE JUDGMENT.
The assimilation of that which is, or which is to be, to that which
has been, and has been observed, and which we may designate the law of
reintegration, applies universally.And under the general canon which
affirms identity when no effective difference appears, it applies to
the future as well as the past, and thus brings the past into the
present and becomes a guide of life. In virtue of this law, it comes to
pass that when the conditions in which a phenomenon has been already
observed recur, and the beginnings of the phenomenon are observed again
or conserved anew, the mind, remembering the past, assimilates itself
to what it was before, and predicts with confidence the completion of
what has commenced again, that is, the recurrence of the whole
phenomenon.
Such is the true theory of the inductive judgment. It does not
stand high in the intellectual scale. And, accordingly, as is well
known, in uncultivated or superstitious minds, who do not distinguish
between the conditions productive of a phenomenon and its accidental
concomitants, the inductive judgment is the source of interminable
blundering. It is a judgment of the very same order as that which leads
a dog to howl when a stick is held over him, if he have been beaten
with a stick on some former occasion. It is, consequently, no argument
whatever for the invariable constancy of nature, much less is it a
sanction for this tenet. Apart from cosmological theories, indeed,
there is no sanction at all for this tenet but that which the
testimonies of the past and the observations of the present supply. If
a narrative attests the observation of seemingly exceptional phenomena,
miracles, or what in general may be called the supernatural, the part
of the man of science is, as in other cases, simply to inquire and to
determine as to the accuracy of the observation. In so far as
scientific principles are concerned, miracle or no miracle is an open
question. The belief in a dead uniformity of phenomena from all
Eternity, in a stated recurrence of the same conditions of Existence,
and in the very same phenomena when the same conditions of Existence
recur, which the popular science of our day either broadly insinuates
or positively affirms, is perhaps the poorest expression of human
conception that has ever claimed the name of philosophy.
ABSTRACTION OR SELECTIVE
ATTENTION.
But the mind, though not engaged with the observation of a present
object, is not under the necessity of always slavishly remembering
something past. The personal activity, the analytic power, just as when
engaged on a display of objects presenting themselves for the first
time, may fix itself as it may please on any one idea or group of ideas
in the revolving panorama of past experience now recalled, to the
neglect of all the others. In this field, as in the other, it may
accomplish an act of SELECTIVE ATTENTION, of which the good and the
evil have been already touched upon. And this, whatever its dangers, is
that to which the name of "Abstraction" has been awarded, and on which
all philosophical praise is popularly bestowed.
CLASSIFICATION.
But Abstraction being wholly and solely of the nature of analysis,
cannot rule long, if indeed at all, alone. As soon as the effort ceases
by which analysis has been sustained, the synthetic action of the mind
spontaneously supervenes, and other ideas come in upon that which
Abstraction has up to that moment detained in consciousness. And of
these ideas, what shall the general character be? This the law of
assimilation must of course determine, for there is no other law. Now,
does not the very name of that law suggest that the ideas now rising up
in the mind, perhaps crowding up into consciousness, shall be similar?
And such they are well known to be. And thus does our theory give the
classification of objects on the ground of their similarity as
necessary or unavoidable, and therefore legitimate. But if legitimate
or normal mentally, then such also that the material world must
respond; for the material world is both a manifestation of mind as to
its origin and design, and a residuum or deposit of mind as to its
substance. Objects, therefore, when classified according to the amount
of their most vital resemblances, are classified according to a natural
method.
GENERALIZATION.
But similars are not identicals. After a classification has been
made, therefore, on the ground of an observed similarity, there opens
up a field for renewed abstraction or selective attention. Differences,
as well as identities, present themselves. But under the law of
assimilation these differences will tend to pass out of consciousness,
and those features in the objects classified which are identical will
tend to be kept in mind. And this is that important process in the
normal spontaneity of the intellect which bears the name of
Generalization. It is deemed to be all-important. And so it is for
sound philosophy; but not for the philosophy of those who are loudest
in its praise. For them generalization is merely vidifaction, merely
"thought," after having accomplished an outward-bound voyage for the
discovery of the universe, returning to view that universe at last only
in those few lights which it can itself reflect. Generalization is
valid for discovery only in so far as mind is the type of all, only in
so far as the make of the mind and the make of the universe is the
same. Now, this is a point on which our most popular philosophy has but
very little to say. Possibly, according to that philosophy, the
products of generalization may be nothing but the imposition of laws
upon Nature as her laws, which are merely phenomena of human
consciousness. And in the face of such a possibility one would have
certainly have need to be solicitous about all philosophy, whether it
had not better be let alone. But, happily for us, there is no occasion
for solicitude. For us, all Nature is but the manifestation of mind;
and that mind is One, and such an One, as is above even the possibility
of awarding existence to any thing which, when in normal action, shall
belie any other thing.
SYLLOGISM.
It is thought by many that in generalization the logical
functioning of the mind comes to a close, and that after the utmost
generalization has been accomplished, it can only retrace its steps and
thus amuse itself or explain to itself its own meaning. And this view
is no doubt countenanced by the common syllogism, whether we adopt the
form of Kanada or of Aristotle, the former being the direct and natural
march, the latter the studied retrace of thought. Perception, as
supplying contents for the syllogism, is of course essential to both;
but it is implied and not expressed in either. Then in the order of the
intellectual spontaneity come Abstraction or selective attention,
Classification and Generalization, and that in the order now named. And
thus Kanada--"This mountain is on fire (selective attention); for it
smokes (classification); whatever smokes is on fire" (generalization).
And thus Aristotle--"All men are mortal (Kanada, whatever is man is
mortal), (generalization); Socrates is a man (classification); Socrates
is mortal" (selective attention).
IDEALS AND ART.
But this is a very superficial view of the intellectual functioning
of the mind. It recognizes as the only laws of suggestion or
association (or "cohesion!) of ideas, first, redintegration," that is,
the reappearance of ideas as assimilated to former experience, or as
products of INCIDENTAL ASSIMILATION, learnedly set down as "coincidence
or proximity in time and space;" and secondly, similarity in the ideas
themselves, that is, ESSENTIAL ASSIMILATION. But there are many other
occasions of suggestion besides these. Nay, it is not possible to
enumerate all the occasions of suggestion. And to attempt to reduce
them to law, which is the popular expression for subjecting them to the
process of generalization, is merely to attempt to include a higher
order of phenomena in a lower, and to lose far more than is gained. In
fact "something" suggests "nothing." and nothing may suggest anything.
The soul, as a member in the cosmos, tends spontaneously to effloresce
with thought. Though not in its own knowledge, yet, in point of fact,
mind is "a mirror of the universe from its own point of view," and
offer it gold, no man can tell what change you will get till you see it
on the counter. Only, in that change you are sure to find the coin
which is proper to the souls own treasury; you are sure to find certain
abiding impressions, certain indwelling ideas, which tend to take a
place in every conception and in every train of thought wherever there
is an opening for them. Such are the postulates of Being, Action,
Unity, Identity, &c. And these the soul gives forth as she has got
and holds them, that is, not as attributes confined to the limited
Being which she has now discovered herself to be, but as general
intuitions manifesting themselves in Mind when existing and acting not
as this or that individual, but as a Perceptivity merely, of which, if
she look for the origin and the fountain, she looks, not to herself,
but to God, the author of all. Moreover, these the ideas of reason, in
virtue of her own intrinsic changefulness the soul is for ever
differentiating within herself, and thus developing into endless
variety. Meanwhile, when engaged upon the outward world, she is also
called upon to observe an endless variety. Now this train of thought,
whether awoke from within or from without, may be either normal or
merely incidental. But in the depths of reason there must ever tend to
be an echo or an image of it, which is always normal.
And hence, on the occasion of any construction by the imagination
on the observation of any phenomenon, form, or action, within or
without, the soul underlays it with its Ideal. More shortly, every
adventitious object and action tends to suggest its Ideal. If it be
asked what we mean by Ideal? The answer is that the ideal of a
phenomenon, a movement, a form, an action, is that which ought to be in
the circumstances as the soul conceives these circumstances. And if it
be asked, what we mean by that which ought to be? the answer is that we
mean the fulfillment of the cosmical laws, or in the moral sphere the
maintenance of cosmical order in the circumstances conceived. Ideals
prove to be symmetries and harmonies, or more generally such movements,
forms, and actions as the law of assimilation dictates, and as are
familiarly known by the qualities of Beauty and Goodness. As to the
principles of Beauty in sensible objects, I have elsewhere shown* that
they are precisely those symmetrical areas and continuously curved
lines or contours, which the cosmical laws tend to develop in material
nature, and that the ideals of the Beautiful in the mind are the
corresponding mathematic.
But the ideals of Him who is the fountain of goodness. Taken
together, the ideals of the Beautiful and the Good, the soul has them,
not as an individual insulated in space, but as a member in the
creation, in intimate relationship with the Creator. And in having them
she cannot but be joyful, either when she is herself able to realize
them outwardly, or when she sees them realized; for in that case her
activity, whether in relation with the senses or the will, must flow
spontaneously and freely; and this we have found to be the sure
condition of enjoyment in every case.
In the wagging of the world, however, the Actual and the Ideal do
not always coincide. And in that case, in consequence of the greater
force and obtrusiveness of the Actual, there is, of course, mental
arrest and uneasiness. The Actual is declared to be ugly or depraved.
It, indeed, the soul, notwithstanding her fusion into the mould of the
body, were capable of taking a cosmical view of objects, all would be
found to be beautiful to which the cosmical laws award existence. But
such a view would not be suitable for us during the period of our
somatic existence. In order to keep up the organization during the long
period required for the development of the soul, and for training her
to obedience to cosmical law, Reason requires to be seconded by
appetite, desire, and aversion. Now this it scarcely could be, if all
our environments appeared to us beautiful and agreeable, as they do to
the cosmically enlightened.
And thus there exists a field for art. Our incapacity to embrace
Nature as a whole, and to view each object in all its reciprocities,
disqualifies us for enjoying many objects that come in our way, Hence a
demand to surround ourselves with certain objects only, namely, such as
may enjoy fully. Now this demand our constructive imagination enables
us to supply; and the result is Art. Like Nature herself, Art may be
developed either as means or as end, thus giving Useful art on the one
hand, and Fine art on the other. But it is to the latter that the name
and our remarks here specially apply. And what follows from our theory
is this, that the secret of a composition in the fine arts which is to
be successful as such, is this, that is shall be true to normal Nature
so far as it goes, but at the same time more isolated, more abstract,
embody fewer ideas, or exist in fewer relations than the corresponding
objects in Nature usually do. Thus is the beholder able to assimilate
his mind to it more completely, that is, to understand it more easily,
and to enjoy it more fully. It is quite a mistake to suppose that a
human Artist can produce anything whatever, that is, finer than the
corresponding production of Nature, when the latter is viewed in all
its greatness and in all its reciprocities, The composition of the
Artist may possibly be finer when considered as its own universe, finer
than any similar objects when picked out of Nature and grouped together
by art,-but not finer than these same object when viewed as they are in
Nature, that is, each a source and a recipient of manifold forms,
sympathies, reciprocities, and radiations.
DOGMATISM, SCEPTICISM, AND MENTAL
IMBECILITY.
There is yet another depth in the law of suggestion, and its
importance cannot be over-estimated; for it appears to be the
institution by which the personal power, freedom, or liberty of the
mind shall have a vote in the purely intellectual sphere. I allude to
that mental phenomenon, in virtue of which an idea tends to be
followed, or, as is commonly said, to suggest its opposite. It takes
its rise in that mental rhythm on which consciousness also depends, and
which consists first in a phase of synthesis, and, immediately after,
in a phase of analysis. These modes of mental action are the
counterparts of each other; and hence they tend to give opposite
products. But the products of synthesis are not modifiable within the
mind. They are determined by the object. They express the mind when in
direct and positive relation with an object, either real or ideal. They
are therefore affirmative, universally affirmative. Hence it remains
for analysis in its CONTRE COUP to affect the negative.
And in our submitting to this rhythm, does not the history of
philosophy, and indeed the history of ordinary thinking appear? When
synthesis becomes the habit of the mind, regardless of genuine data,
there results Dogmatism. When analysis becomes the habit, without a
legitimate field, there results Scepticism. When each phase acts
separately, and after intervals, instead of simultaneously, there is
intellectual Imbecility. Only when both in good balance co-operate
powerfully and fast, is there sound judgment or good sense. Dogmatism
and scepticism are both evils; but if liberty could not be secured in
the intellectual sphere except on the condition of this
synthetico-analytical rhythm, which thus occasionally produces them,
these evils are not too great a price to pay for so great a boom.
THE PURE DIALECTIC.
Moreover, the normal products of this rhythm are far greater and
far better than its abortions are bad. To it, indeed, we owe our ready
suggestion, not only of opposites, but of correlatives generally, and
indeed all our orderly knowledge. Take an instance, the simplest
possible. I conceive or posit "unity," that is, I exist in synthesis
with that idea-that is , my mental activity finds itself attending to
or kept in arrest by unity as an object. But being essentially an
activity, and claiming its own action as its own right, my mind
naturally, that is, I naturally tend to emancipate myself from that
arrest, and so to break off from the object which has been holding me
in arrest. I tend to break off from the idea of unity. But if I do, and
obey the law of assimilation in my act, I must break off only in the
same field of thought. The idea in which I break off must somehow
contain the idea of unity. Hence I say to myself "not unity, yet
something in the same field as unity;" \and this done, analysis has
completed its phase. And now the phase of synthesis supervenes, and I
obtain as a synthetic datum, "one + not one," not, however, as two, but
as one, for I hold them in synthesis. But what is one + not one when
held as one? Plainly it is a whole or "totality." But now analysis may
cut in, which, as the expression of the mental activity, it ever tends
to do; and thus looking with the analytic eye upon a totality or whole,
and seeing it to consist of one + not one, ---that is, one and other
number or numbers not stated,--I obtain the idea of "plurality." And
here the development comes to a close, for the nest step is only a
return upon the idea of totality. Thus a sustained, spontaneous or
constitutional, synthetic habit when acting, is cut in upon by the
individual, the personal, the volitional activity, and they give
together (in this case) the arithmetical elements--unity, plurality,
totality.
Subjected to the same dialectic, the idea of Force, gives the
series, -- Cause, -- Effect, -- Energy.
The idea of Being gives -- Being, -- Acting, -- Power; and so on.
But such developments do not take place with a rapidity which is
altogether fatal to liberty. During the change of phase from synthesis
to analysis, or back again, like the moment of rest in the swinging
pendulum or undulating particle of elastic medium, a moment of
contemplation normally awakes, which may be prolonged at will. The
mental activity can command for itself more or less completely a state
of repose. If the repose were complete, while yet the minds eye
remained open, there would be no analysis, no abstraction, no
exclusion. The soul acting no longer then as an EGO, but simply as a
perceptivity or a purely intuitional Being, might mirror a given
Reality as it really is, and attain to views of things as they are.
There would be nothing in that case to impair its vision of the
Infinite and the Absolute.
Reasoning.
The gift of self-directive power or liberty if, on the one hand, it
opens a wide door for error, invested man, on the other hand, with the
power of suspending action of his mind for a time, that is, his
judgment, in reference to much which in seeming only is belief-worthy.
Liberty cannot intrude, indeed, either into the sphere of Reason,-that
is, the sphere of constitutional intuition,-nor into that of
unequivocal perception, nor of trust-worthy recollection. Nor can it
interfere with the judgment of identity, that is with the affirmation
of one thing of another when no difference between them appears. But it
can interfere in a multitude of cases notwithstanding. And the result
of this interference is nothing less important than the genesis of that
mode of intellectual action which, when viewed without reference to any
special end, is named thinking, and when viewed in reference to a
proposed end, is named reasoning. And thus we see what are the
conditions which render reasoning possible, and wherein it consists. It
is rendered possible by the possession of such individualized mental
power or liberty as can put an arrest for a time upon the synthetic
habit of the mind (which always tends to accomplish its act
spontaneously, and to affirm immediately), and which can thus for a
time hold up to the view of the mind an object or thought without any
judgment being passed upon it. And it consists in entertaining during
this interval of suspended judgment without partiality the various
objects, real or ideal, which present themselves according to their
various relations to the thesis, and in endeavouring to carry out in
reference to them the laws of the intellect. Reasoning, therefore,
consists in stopping precipitate conclusions, in listening both
outwardly and inwardly, in comparing and in selecting, with a view to
an ultimate synthesis of judgment. It is therefore happily expressed in
its integrity by the term deliberating.
Reasoning is the whole of our intellectual nature in exercise; and
to accomplish it fully, and bring it to a close correctly, is the
greatest of all intellectual achievements. But it implies many risks.
And even where the data are must rich and ample, there are two risks of
a most serious nature. They arise from the use that is made of the
personal power or liberty during the process.
First, if liberty is permitted to interfere too freely or too long,
so that synthesis is not allowed to strike, that is, judgment to take
place, when it ought, then a special habit is formed; for the judgment,
like all transformable powers, becomes weak through want of use. If, on
the contrary, we do not invoke the aid of our liberty at all, and judge
immediately and without reflection, it is only the favoured of Heaven
who keep right. The point of true intellectuality is the discreet use
of both-the secret of avoiding precipitate judgments, on the one hand,
and of suspending the judgment too long on the other.
But come what may, we must do our best. Even the savage cannot get
on without reasoning; and in a highly civilized state of society
reasoning is constantly needed as the guide of daily life; for, of
civilized society it too often looks as if the very secret were to pass
off a seeming for a reality, and to build upon the gullibility of the
public. Thus the lower animals, which, with all their Heaven-born
instincts, are devoid of liberty, and, consequently, cannot deliberate,
make sad fools of themselves in society, or when invited by man to
accommodate themselves to his ways. A salmon, after having succeeded,
by waiting and working with nature, in accomplishing a voyage of a good
hundred miles, perhaps, up the river to a suitable spawning bed, when
hailed by the angler, leaps at a steel hook dressed with a little
tinsel, and grasps it, mistaking it for a fly, and is caught and
killed. A hen that can rear a family of a dozen simultaneous
descendants in a way which any mother of twins merely may envy, when
the brooding disposition returns upon her, will step with infinite
complacency into a nest containing a few balls of chalk, mistaking them
for her own eggs, and will settle her feathers over them, and sit upon
them week after week till she is nearly dead. When at liberty in a
room, a monkey, which in appearance is a perfect sage, while stealing
up to an object suspended from the side of a lady engaged in knitting,
will show all the caution and cunning of the detective police, and
having at last laid hold of the ball of worsted, it will gallop off in
triumph as if it had now got possession of a great thing - having
mistaken a ball of worsted for a fruit. The lower animals fall into
such mistakes, not because their senses are not so acute as ours, not
because their senses cannot mark differences, but because they cannot
take possession of their own thought and suspend their judgment, even
for a moment, because they cannot think, cannot reason, because, in a
word, they have no individualized power of their own, no liberty.
IMAGINING.
When the object proposed, then as the aim of intellectual action,
is either the development of a truth representative of reality, or the
elimination of an error, we have a process of reasoning. Nor is it
improperly so called; for the principles which are regulative of the
process are the principles of reason, that is, reason itself. But the
object proposed by the mind need not necessarily be the establishment
of a truth. It may possibly be the construction of a world of the minds
own, for the entertainment of self or of kindred minds. The mental
action is then named Imagining; and it is usually regarded as a
distinct faculty, named The Imagination. But the powers of mind
engaged, nay, the process itself, is the same as in reasoning, only the
train of thought in imagining is not guarded, or selected, on the same
principle as it is in reasoning. In imagining, the mind leaves itself
free to dwell upon all that it suggests in connection with the theme,
and from among all these suggestions to choose those which will best
give the construction which it is intending. In imagining,
consequently, the mind throws itself loose from the law of
redintegration; for if it obey that law, there would result a train of
recollections or of memory only. It throws itself loose, also, from the
process of exploring the contents of general statements, as also from
that of striking and transforming identicals, and substituting and
balancing equivalents; for in either of these cases there would result
a process of reasoning. In a word, in imagining, the soul places
herself in the full exercise of her liberty on the throne of thought,
and allows herself when seated there to dictate the development. When
engaged in imagining, therefore, the mind is in its most exalted
exercise, that exercise in which the law of assimilation has fullest
play; for when thus engaged the creature is not merely acting the part
of a creature, not merely receiving on the bosom of the mind the
impress of God and of nature, and being assimilated and instructed in
the knowledge of realities divine and human. When imagining the
creature is assimilating himself to the Creator, as such. He is
venturing on the production of a cosmos of his own, or of some object
of objects in such a cosmos. And sometimes in gifted minds, though very
rarely, the creation resulting, though not real, have all the features
of reality-yes, all the features of the highest order of reality of
their own kinds-except, of course, extension and substance in dynamical
position in space. Such, for instance, are many of the creation in the
sphere of human nature, which have been constructed by the genius of
Shakespeare.
DISCOVERING
But why ought not the mind, when well instructed in the Being and
attributes of God, Nature, and man, and when imagining or developing
thought harmoniously with its acquired knowledge and the laws of
intelligence, reach the real creation, or real objects in it, as its
own creation, if the real objects be what it is aiming at? Plainly in
this there is nothing impossible or oven hopeless. Nay, this is the
only method of discovering which has been as yet successful. A fine
discovery is only an enlightened imagination verified by the
responsiveness to it of external nature. And, possibly, between the
enlightened imagination and the verification there may be an interval
of long ages. Nature often shows herself to the individual mind in
flashes, which to that favoured mind do not stand in need of
verification, and which to mind in general cannot be verified perhaps
for long ages thereafter. And such flashes, to a wonderful extent, were
the privilege of the philosophers of India, and of the eastern coasts
of the Mediterranean, in ancient times. Our calling and our capacities
are chiefly to verification. But when our heads are right with those
who have gone before us, this is no drudgery; for God is as good, and
nature is as beautiful as ever.
SUMMARY
Such are the outlines of a pure Psychology or Pneumatology.
1. An individualized Being, consisting of such as amount of
substance or potentiality as enables it to fulfill the cosmical law of
Assimilation fully; that is, both(a) as to the Being and Attributes,
and also (b) as to the Power of the Creator, is a Spirit; and to the
extent that it does so assimilate itself, it is a good spirit.
2. From the impress of the Creator in His Being and attributes upon
a spirit, and its assimilation to Him is these respects, there result
in the consciousness of that spirit Religious Obligation and Reason .
3. From the impress of the World in its objects and economy upon a
spirit, and the spirits assimilation to the world in these respects,
there result, External Perception, and Moral Obligation, with the
incidental formation and subsequent retention of manifold Assimilations
or Ideas.
4. From the impress of a spirit in former states (variously
revived) upon itself as it exists in its present state, and its
assimilation to these former states, there results Recollection, both
(a) simply retrospective and (b) anticipative, that is, both Memory and
Consecution (the inductive judgment). And thus is the first epoch of
mental existence constituted. A panorama is given, in which a purely
instinctive, spontaneous, and happy life may be led.
But a spirit exists under the abiding impress not only of the Being
and attributes, but of the Might or power of God. It is accordingly
under the law of Assimilation, put in possession of power or ability to
act from within self as a fountain of action.
5. In the panorama therefore which is giving, it is free to ramble
or to fix itself on what objects it pleases. It is endowed with the
faculty of Self-directed Attention. But meanwhile existing, as it ever
does, under the law of assimilation, it cannot refrain from marking
similarities and no-similarities, that is, differences. And if it act
normally under the law of assimilation, it must bestow a Selective
Attention upon similarities, pursuing them till all differences are
eliminated. In other words, it must, Abstract, Classify, and Generalize.
6. But in merely rambling, attending, or selecting among data
supplied from without, the power of a spirit is not exhausted. When
existing in its normal relations, it is suggestive or productive of
ideas which may not be given in the panorama placed before it or
obstruded upon it. From its own depths it can supply itself with their
Ideals..
7. Moreover, the structure of consciousness (see Chap. iii.) puts
it in possession of a pure Dialectic, supplying correlatives of all
kinds, whereby the primal panorama and the minds store of ideas may be
immensely varied and indefinitely increased.
8. Hence a field in which error cannot but mingle largely with
truth. Thought and life can no longer proceed spontaneously and
instinctively. Wrong may be chosen instead of Right, and Evil may come
to be.
9. But if the law of assimilation be honored from first to last,
the discovery of truth and right conduct are for ever secure. The life
of the spirit meanwhile has risen from the merely instinctive to that
which is Rational and Moral.
