Immateriality

“ If thought is the property and product of immateriality, then nothing material can affect it; the one cannot come in contact with the other, and therefore they cannot interfere with each other, any more than an act of congress can collide with a locomotive. But we do find that materiality may interfere with thought, that one material substance producing pressure on another--the brain--will put a stop to the evolution of thought. ”

“ Of immateriality, said Imlac, our ideas are negative, and therefore obscure. Immateriality seems to imply a natural power of perpetual duration as a consequence of exemption from all causes of decay: whatever perishes, is destroyed by the solution of its contexture, and separation of its parts; nor can we conceive how that which has no parts, and therefore admits no solution, can be naturally corrupted or impaired. ”

“ Some, who have espoused the doctrine of the immateriality of ideas, have seriously doubted the existence of a material world, with which only our senses acquaint us; and yet have assented to the existence of spirit, with which our senses cannot acquaint us; and have finally allowed, that all our knowledge is derived through the medium of our senses! They forget, that if the spirit of animation had no properties in common with matter, it could neither affect nor be affected by the material body. ”

“ We must, then, either admit that mental action is a product of material power, and consequently itself material, or else conclude that, while it is the result of the expenditure of power, it is in its character immaterial, which would be absurd, because it is impossible to represent immateriality in thought, as consciousness requires a subjective action and objective reception of it to complete a thought, while immateriality is neither. ”

“ These three propositions are the institutes to which every controversy about the materiality or immateriality of the mind must be referred for settlement. A conception of the mind as immaterial can only be attained by, first of all, conceiving it as that which is the universal part, as contradistinguished from all that is the particular part, of every cognition. Hence the necessity of Proposition VII., which fixes the ego as the universal part of all, and matter, in its various forms, as the particular part of some, cognitions. ”

“ How form an estimate of that picture whose colours elude our sight, whose design we cannot perceive, whose features have no means of becoming familiar to our mind, whose very canvas refuses itself to our all research, of which the artist himself can afford no other idea, no other description, but that it is, although he himself can neither shew us how or where! We have seen the ruinous foundations upon which men have hitherto erected this fanciful idea of immateriality; we have examined the proofs which they have offered, if proofs they can be called, in support of their hypothesis ”

“ “Some,” answered Imlac, “have indeed said that the soul is material, but I can scarcely believe that any man has thought it who knew how to think; for all the conclusions of reason enforce the immateriality of mind, and all the notices of sense and investigations of science concur to prove the unconsciousness of matter. ”

“ Page 18 But to ascend into a realm of immateriality, where cognition becomes a process of pure perception while the intellectual faculties are in full play and centred in the immaterial man, must manifestly be conducive to an enlarged comprehension of religious truth. ”

“ To talk of immaterial existences, is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say, they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by the Lockes, the Tracys, and the Stewarts. ”

“ Ask any true philosopher if he can explain the meaning of an "immaterial substance." It is like the centre of a being everywhere and his circumference nowhere, or like being seated on the top of a topless throne. ”

“ Lastly, we find that the direction, which this reality takes, suggests to us the idea of a thing unmaking itself; such, no doubt, is one of the essential characters of materiality. What conclusion are we to draw from all this, if not that the process by which this thing makes itself is directed in a contrary way to that of physical processes, and that it is therefore, by its very definition, immaterial? The vision we have of the material world is that of a weight which falls: no image drawn from matter, properly so called, will ever give us the idea of the weight rising. ”

“ The Immaterial does not exist; for even the Material which is not, is the Immaterial. Everything that is, is material. Now, however, there is nothing that is not; consequently, there is everywhere nothing immaterial. ”

“ The final destruction of all that we name material hasteth. Materialism is self-love, and more opaque than the solidity of material atoms is the condensation of mortal mind; but instead of concentrated matter we find it concentrated error. ”

“ No; the real alternative is materialism, which played so large a part in philosophy fifty years ago, and which, defeated there, has betaken itself to the field of practical affairs. This is the dread alternative of a denial of the great faith of humanity, a blight which would apply a sponge to all the high aspirations and ideals of the race. According to this dogma, the first and last things in the universe are atoms, their number, dance, combinations, and growth. All mind, all will, all emotion, all character, all love is incidental, transitory, vain. ”

“ If we use the word "emanation," our mind involuntarily recurs to something material, flowing out of some other thing that is material; and if we reject this idea of materiality, nothing is left of the emanation but an unreality. The word "thing" itself suggests to us that which is material and within the cognizance and jurisdiction of the senses. If we cut away from it the idea of materiality, it presents itself to us as no thing, but an intangible unreality, which the mind vainly endeavors to grasp. ”

“ It would, however, imply a contradiction if, on the one hand, we contended that all ideas had their origin in the world of senses, and, on the other hand, that a word was worth more than a word; that besides the individual beings known to us by our senses, there existed also beings of a general nature. An immaterial substance is rather the same absurdity as an immaterial body. ”

“ But to return to Immaterial Spirits, that they should rule and govern infinite corporeal matter, like so many demy-Gods, by a dilating nod, and a contracting frown, and cause so many kinds and sorts of Corporeal Figures to arise, being Incorporeal themselves, is Impossible for me to conceive; for how can an Immaterial substance cause a Material corporeal substance, which has no motion in it self, to form so many several and various figures and creatures, and make so many alterations, and continue their kinds and sorts by perpetual successions of Particulars? ”

“ This thin matter is just as material as lead or brass. And such systems are purely materialistic. But they illustrate the extraordinary difficulty that the ordinary mind experiences in attempting to rise from sensuous to non-sensuous thinking. They illustrate the ingrained materialism of man. ”

“ The truth is that there is one, and only one, method of refuting materialism: it is to show that matter is precisely that which it appears to be. Thereby we eliminate all virtuality, all hidden power, from matter, and establish the phenomena of spirit as an independent reality. ”

“ It is a decision against which all our persuasions struggle, and we must be long convicted before we can be convinced that the solid universe of external things is 'such stuff as dreams are made of.' The shocking absurdities of the popular philosophy of mind and matter, its fatal consequences in morals, and their violent dogmatism concerning the source of all things, had early conducted me to materialism. This materialism is a seducing system to young and superficial minds. ”

“ That there is no such thing as "immaterial matter" is a self-evident truth; and either we must affirm the materiality of spirit, or deny its existence; for what would an immaterial spirit be? the same as immaterial fire or water or atmosphere. To say that any one of the substances named is immaterial is to deny its existence. ”

“ But this consideration forces us still further, and we feel compelled to ask ourselves, whether, with our minds constituted as they are, we can believe in, or understand any thing wholly immaterial? Whether we can imagine the existence, for, example, of "force" without matter?—a shape which is formless?—a form visible to the eye, yet wholly immaterial? ”

“ All that is left of the whole structure of nineteenth century materialism has crumbled away to that word “bits.” We cannot as yet imagine or think without resting somewhere on “bits.” Our minds like our feet need a solid something beneath them. ”

“ When we grant that the material universe contains in itself no creative energy, and that all the manifold laws by which seemingly blind atoms rise by intelligent coordination to organic conditions, and thus to intellectual activities, have not created themselves, we have exhausted the argument for materialism as a possible explanation of First Cause. And now we appeal to an Infinite Intelligence, a spiritual essence, superior to material conditions, and attempt to satisfy reason by making the universe the sequence of a Sovereign Will? ”

“ So we go on, bruised and broken, and at length buried and forgot, most of us never grasping these unseen things, not even having a hint of their immaterial presences. It is only as the jest-loving fates have it that, once in a while, something in revolutionary thought drops to earth, is caught by some materialistic mind, bred up by some materialistic hand. ”

“ The remainder of the essay endeavors to meet the charge of materialism. The following is the conclusion:—"In itself it is of little moment whether we express the phaenomena of matter in terms of spirit; or the phaenomena of spirit in terms of matter: matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a property of matter—each statement has a certain relative truth. But with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic terminology is in every way to be preferred. ”

“ The Materialistic starting-point is from an unauthorized postulate—in common parlance, an unfounded assumption; each step it takes is attended with a fresh need of postulation, amounting at last to the gravest burden of improbability. And when the materializing goal is reached we gain nothing—no treasure is discovered—no vista opened into new realms of intellectual or moral empire. We are only told that our supposed insight was but a dream. We are only warned to dream no more. Materialism has murdered insight. ”

“ The error, then, of the materialist consists in the supposition that the mind or self is a particular The two errors summed up.material thing, or a particular development from material conditions. The error of the immaterialist consists in the supposition that the mind or self is a particular immaterial thing. Such statements are mere hypotheses—indeed, mere words, to which no conception is attached. The doom of both is settled by the remark, that the ego cannot be known as a particular thing at all, but only as the One Known in All Known. ”

“ And therefore those who place thinking in an immaterial substance only, before they can come to deal with these men, must show why personal identity cannot be preserved in the change of immaterial substances, or variety of particular immaterial substances, as well as animal identity is preserved in the change of material substances, or variety of particular bodies: unless they will say, it is one immaterial spirit that makes the same life in brutes, as it is one immaterial spirit that makes the same person in men ”

“ It is this assumption that I call ‘scientific materialism.’ Also it is an assumption which I shall challenge as 25being entirely unsuited to the scientific situation at which we have now arrived. It is not wrong, if properly construed. If we confine ourselves to certain types of facts, abstracted from the complete circumstances in which they occur, the materialistic assumption expresses these facts to perfection. But when we pass beyond the abstraction, either by more subtle employment of our senses, or by the request for meanings and for coherence of thoughts, the scheme breaks down at once. ”

“ Is there anything more contradictory, more impossible, or more mysterious, than the creation of matter by an immaterial Being, who Himself immutable, causes the continual changes that we see in the world? ”

“ The basis of materialism is the assertion that only sense is real.
Our medical studies necessarily begin with minute and prolonged study of what we term ‘dead matter.’ If this study be carried on without reverence, it appears to blind the student to any reality except the material under his scalpel or in his crucible—i.e., the facts that the senses reveal. ”

“ This outward world, the world of sense, he proclaims to be illusion and appearance. Reality is something which lies behind, and is invisible to the senses. Now the very essence of materialism is that this material world, this world of sense, is the real world. Idealism is the doctrine that the sense-world is an appearance. How then can Parmenides be called a materialist? ”

“ If we know nothing at all about their essence, how can we either affirm or deny anything with respect to that essence? From all that we have here said, it will not be inferred by any rational thinker that we are a materialist, and just as little that we are an immaterialist. ”

“ On one side, a gross materialism, of which the shameless maxims would revolt his soul; impure resting-places offered to the bastard characters of a century by the unworthy complacency of philosophers; on the other side, a pretended system of perfectibility, not less suspicious, which, to realize the chimera of a general perfection common to the whole universe, would not be embarrassed for a choice of means. ”