Metaphysical science

“ Besides which, let positive science, or rather the positive philosophy, in the name of positive facts, proscribe metaphysic as it will, is it not evident that the fundamental conceptions of all science—number, atom, force, matter, cause, law—are metaphysical conceptions? Is it not evident that all science whatever is impossible without a certain number of principles or notions,—in a word, of intellectual laws, which even govern experience itself? ”

“ The problems of the metaphysician are no doubt, in a sense, always the same; but this is equally true of the problems of any other science. The methods by which the problems are attacked and the adequacy of the solutions they receive vary, from age to age, in close correspondence with the general development of science. Every great metaphysical conception has exercised its influence on the general history of science, and, in return, every important movement in science has affected the development of Metaphysics. ”

“ The metaphysician could not if he would, and would not if he could, escape the duty of estimating the bearing of the great scientific theories of his time upon our ultimate conceptions of the nature of the world as a whole. Every fundamental advance in science thus calls for a restatement and reconsideration of the old metaphysical problems in the light of the new discovery. ”

“ That this is the alternative that is embodied in the existence of metaphysics is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the metaphysical interpretation embodies itself in the categories of reason, design, purpose, and aim. Whatever difficulties we may encounter, then, in the use and application of the psychic analogy in determining the nature of the real, it is clear that its employment is inevitable and indispensable. ”

“ When a single statement of our metaphysics is proven, every one is proven; for each one will be found to correspond with the Principle of metaphysics when this Principle is understood. If we have given to you, dear readers, as you all can prove on learning it, the science of metaphysics in healing the sick, we also have given you the correct metaphysical version of the foregoing texts. ”

“ When we say that there is nothing real outside the world of psychical fact, we are not saying that reality is merely psychical fact as such. What we do say is that, however much more it may be, it is at least that. 28How much more we can say of reality, beyond the bare statement that it is made up of experiences or psychical matters of fact, it is the task of our metaphysical science to determine; at present our problem, though given to us in its general elements, still awaits solution. ”

“ Knowledge and belief name these mental forces matter, but metaphysical science gives them back to mind. There is no inherent power in what is termed matter; for all that is material is a product of mortal thought, and governed by that thought. God creates and governs the spiritual universe and man, and they are the products of Spirit, even the ideas that He evolves, and which are obedient to the Mind that made them. There is no other universe or man. ”

“ The metaphysical scientist, understanding that all is mind, commences with causation; that which forms the body according to its belief, and makes the belief right, gets the image of cicatrization, abnormal growths, dislocation, curvatures, etc., expelled from the thought, and sets the belief to building more symmetrically; or, better still, with the truth of being destroys the error or belief in matter to such an extent, the phenomenon of Truth instead of error, harmony instead of discord, suppleness instead of stiffness and deformity, appears at once. ”

“ Never imagine that you thoroughly understand metaphysical healing at this period from perusing this work, or any other that can be written on the subject. Our personal instructions are what plant you on the spiritual basis of which we treat, lifting you above the old and perishing fossils of the schools, and mentally fitting you to begin this far-off, unattained, and glorious science. We tear down before we build; and this demolishing more than building is the task of teaching metaphysics. ”

“ Whether we think of it as a system of finite subjects, the will of a personal Deity, a complex of primary qualities, or an unknown substratum, or whether we decline to raise any question whatever about the matter, the results are the same, so long as our sole 211object is to exhibit the sequence of presented sense-contents as regulated by laws which admit of calculation. Science can go its way in entire indifference to all these alternative metaphysical interpretations of the Reality which is behind the phenomenal order. ”

“ But that inquiry lies in the province of metaphysics, and is not necessarily involved in the pursuit of natural science. Metaphysics uses the results of natural science, as of all other branches of learning, as evidence bearing on her own deeper and more difficult questions. But it does not follow that natural science must solve metaphysical problems before being of use to man and enlarging the sphere of his knowledge. ”

“ Some authors, in past centuries, thought that the only object of metaphysics was to treat of beings above nature; and accordingly taught that God and the angels alone were metaphysical beings—that is, beings ranging above nature. On the contrary, man and this visible world—that is, all creatures liable to local motion—they called natural beings, and considered them to be the proper and exclusive object of physical science. ”

“ The chief danger against which we must guard in this part of our metaphysical studies is that of expecting too much from our science. We could never, of course, hope for such a complete interpretation of facts as might be possible to omniscience. At most we can only expect to see in a general way how the physical and again how the psychical order must be thought of if our view as to the ultimate structure of Reality is sound. For an exact understanding of the way in which the details of physical and psychical existence are woven into the all-embracing pattern of the real, we must not look. ”

“ We may perhaps follow the usage of some recent writers in marking this difference of object by a difference in terminology, and say that the goal of experimental science is the Description of facts, the goal of Metaphysics their Interpretation. The difference of aim is, however, not ultimate. Description of facts, when once we cease to be content with such description as will subserve the purpose of calculation and call for description of the fact as it really is, of itself becomes metaphysical interpretation. ”

“ While, then, acknowledging in a spirit of homage savoring of of awe the abstract grandeur of the metaphysical intellect and the aims of its activity, he has earnestly but not irreverently inquired. Do you metaphysicians not deceive yourselves? ”

“ If he says that mental phenomena cannot exist without a metaphysical ground or condition, and that therefore we ought to take it into account in all our study of mental phenomena, then he ought to hold that we should take into account the metaphysical ground or basis of material phenomena in all our study of them, and that the distinction between science and metaphysics should be abolished. ”

“ In our view of the underlying reality of the physical order, as explained in the last chapter, we have scarcely gone further, except in the explicitness of our phraseology, than we should be followed by many who profess a complete disbelief in metaphysical construction and an exclusive devotion to positive natural science. ”

“ IN the material world, thought has brought to light with great rapidity many useful wonders. With like activity have thought's swift pinions been rising Materialistic challenge towards the realm of the real, to the spiritual cause of those lower things which give impulse to inquiry. Belief in a material basis, from which may be deduced all rationality, is slowly yielding to the idea of a metaphysical basis, looking away from matter to Mind as the cause of every effect. Materialistic hypotheses challenge metaphysics to meet in final combat. ”

“ As we have learned already, when we pass from the statement that the processes of the physical order may, for the purpose of description by general formulæ, and the invention of practical methods for their production, be treated as to all intents mechanical, to the very different assertion that the physical order really is rigidly mechanical, we have deserted empirical science for dogmatic Metaphysics, and our metaphysical dogma must stand or fall by its own ultimate coherency and intelligibility as a way of thinking about Reality. ”

“ Now as to the origin of these beliefs and customs, their causes naturally fall into two categories, the physical and the metaphysical. Modern biological science regards the whole question from the physical side almost exclusively, and facts and experiences that belong largely or exclusively to the metaphysical realm are warped out of their natural order to fit the theory of interpretation. ”

“ He must ask what are known things, and especially what has been discovered in the sciences; in mechanics, in order to find the essence of bodies which is neglected by idealism; in mental science, in order to understand consciousness which is neglected by materialism. With the conviction that the only fair way of describing metaphysics has been to avoid putting forward one system, and even to pay most attention to the dominant idealism, we have nevertheless been driven occasionally to test opinions by this independent metaphysical method. ”

“ Metaphysics, as taught by me at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, is far from dry and abstract. It is a Science that has the animus of Truth. Its practical application to benefit the race, heal the sick, enlighten and reform the sinner, makes divine metaphysics needful, indispensable. Teaching metaphysics at other colleges means, mainly, elaborating a man-made theory, or some speculative view too vapory and hypothetical for questions of practical import. ”

“ It will be clear to any one who reflects that the very first problem in regard to the method of metaphysics will be that of its starting-point and the kind of results it is to look for. And little can be accomplished here until it has been settled that consciousness is to have the primacy, and that its prerogative is to supply both standpoint and principle of the investigation. We have gone a long way toward mastering our method when we have settled these points: (1) that the metaphysical world is a world of consciousness ”

“ If it is true that the deductions from physical science cannot be conceived to explain some among the observed facts of nature, and if it is true that these particular facts admit of being conceivably explained by the metaphysical hypothesis in question, then, beyond all controversy, this metaphysical hypothesis must be provisionally accepted. ”

“ By a wealth of facts and experimental illustrations he demonstrates the purely metaphysical character of both the prevalent theories, and gradually develops the only consistent concept of an element which was possible for his time—namely, any substance which no experimental evidence could show to be reducible to simpler substances. ”

“ All natural philosophers, who wished to proceed mathematically in their work, have hence invariably (although unknown to themselves) made use of metaphysical principles, and must make use of such, it matters not how energetically they may otherwise repudiate any claim of metaphysics on their science. ”

“ But all true metaphysics is taken from the essential nature of the thinking faculty itself, and therefore in nowise invented, since it is not borrowed from experience, but contains the pure operations of thought, that is, conceptions and principles à priori, which the manifold of empirical presentations first of all brings into legitimate connection, by which it can become empirical knowledge, i.e. experience. ”

“ And I think that the most prominent characteristic of metaphysics, in history, has been its profession to prove the truth about non-natural existents. I define ‘metaphysical,’ therefore, by a reference to supersensible reality; although I think that the only non-natural objects, about which it has succeeded in obtaining truth, are objects which do not exist at all. ”

“ As to the historical and practical significance of realistic metaphysics in the history of life and of religion, one must say at once that, like all human conceptions, these various fundamental metaphysical conceptions also are, in one aspect, distinctly active and practical attitudes towards that Other which finite thought seeks. ”

“ If, therefore, we are to define ‘metaphysics’ not by what it has attained, but by what it has attempted, we should say that it consists in the attempt to obtain knowledge, by processes of reasoning, of what exists but is not a part of Nature. Metaphysicians have actually held that they could give us such knowledge of non-natural existence. They have held that their science consists in giving us such knowledge as can be supported by reasons, of that supersensible reality of which religion professes to give us a fuller knowledge, without any reasons. ”

“ While, on the other hand, if in the world of thought there be the same relative difference between the real and the apparent which prevails in the natural universe, a science, the science of metaphysics, will be required to bring before us the facts of our own real thinking, and to correct and displace the facts of our own mere apparent thinking. ”