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This book
contains the substance of a course of lectures recently given by the
writer in the Queen Street Hall, Edinburgh. Its purpose is to indicate the
Natural Principles governing the relation between Mental Action and
Material Conditions, and thus to afford the student an intelligible
starting-point for the practical study of the subject.
T.T.
March, 1904.
In commencing a
course of lectures on Mental Science, it is somewhat difficult for the
lecturer to fix upon the best method of opening the subject. It can be
approached from many sides, each with some peculiar advantage of its own;
but, after careful deliberation, it appears to me that, for the purpose of
the present course, no better starting-point could be selected than the
relation between Spirit and Matter. I select this starting-point because
the distinction—or what we believe to be such— between them is one with
which we are so familiar that I can safely assume its recognition by
everybody; and I may, therefore, at once state this distinction by using
the adjectives which we habitually apply as expressing the natural
opposition between the two—living spirit and dead matter.
These terms express our current impression of the opposition between
spirit and matter with sufficient accuracy, and considered only from the
point of view of outward appearances this impression is no doubt correct.
The general consensus of mankind is right in trusting the evidence of our
senses, and any system which tells us that we are not to do so will never
obtain a permanent footing in a sane and healthy community. There is
nothing wrong in the evidence conveyed to a healthy mind by the senses of
a healthy body, but the point where error creeps in is when we come to
judge of the meaning of this testimony. We are accustomed to judge only by
external appearances and by certain limited significances which we attach
to words; but when we begin to enquire into the real meaning of our words
and to analyse the causes which give rise to the appearances, we find our
old notions gradually falling off from us, until at last we wake up to the
fact that we are living in an entirely different world to that we formerly
recognized. The old limited mode of thought has imperceptibly slipped
away, and we discover that we have stepped out into a new order of things
where all is liberty and life. This is the work of an enlightened
intelligence resulting from persistent determination to discover what
truth really is irrespective of any preconceived notions from whatever
source derived, the determination to think honestly for ourselves instead
of endeavouring to get our thinking done for us. Let us then commence by
enquiring what we really mean by the livingness which we attribute to
spirit and the deadness which we attribute to matter.
At first we may
be disposed to say that livingness consists in the power of motion and
deadness in its absence; but a little enquiry into the most recent
researches of science will soon show us that this distinction does not go
deep enough. It is now one of the fully-established facts of physical
science that no atom of what we call “dead matter” is without motion. On
the table before me lies a solid lump of steel, but in the light of
up-to-date science I know that the atoms of that seemingly inert mass are
vibrating with the most intense energy, continually dashing hither and
thither, impinging upon and rebounding from one another, or circling round
like miniature solar systems, with a ceaseless rapidity whose complex
activity is enough to bewilder the imagination. The mass, as a mass, may
lie inert upon the table; but so far from being destitute of the element
of motion it is the abode of the never-tiring energy moving the particles
with a swiftness to which the speed of an express train is as nothing. It
is, therefore, not the mere fact of motion that is at the root of the
distinction which we draw instinctively between spirit and matter; we must
go deeper than that. The solution of the problem will never be found by
comparing Life with what we call deadness, and the reason for this will
become apparent later on; but the true key is to be found by comparing one
degree of livingness with another. There is, of course, one sense in which
the quality of livingness does not admit of degrees; but there is another
sense in which it is entirely a question of degree. We have no doubt as to
the livingness of a plant, but we realize that it is something very
different from the livingness of an animal. Again, what average boy would
not prefer a fox-terrier to a goldfish for a pet? Or, again, why is it
that the boy himself is an advance upon the dog? The plant, the fish, the
dog, and the boy are all equally alive; but there is a difference
in the quality of their livingness about which no one can have any doubt,
and no one would hesitate to say that this difference is in the degree of
intelligence. In whatever way we turn the subject we shall always find
that what we call the “livingness” of any individual life is ultimately
measured by its intelligence. It is the possession of greater intelligence
that places the animal higher in the scale of being than the plant, the
man higher than the animal, the intellectual man higher than the savage.
The increased intelligence calls into activity modes of motion of a higher
order corresponding to itself. The higher the intelligence, the more
completely the mode of motion is under its control: and as we descend in
the scale of intelligence, the descent is marked by a corresponding
increase in automatic motion not subject to the control of a
self-conscious intelligence. This descent is gradual from the expanded
self-recognition of the highest human personality to that lowest order of
visible forms which we speak of as “things,” and from which
self-recognition is entirely absent.
We see, then,
that the livingness of Life consists in intelligence—in other words, in
the power of Thought; and we may therefore say that the distinctive
quality of spirit is Thought, and, as the opposite to this, we may say
that the distinctive quality of matter is Form. We cannot conceive of
matter without form. Some form there must be, even though invisible to the
physical eye; for matter, to be matter at all, must occupy space, and to
occupy any particular space necessarily implies a corresponding form. For
these reasons we may lay it down as a fundamental proposition that the
distinctive quality of spirit is Thought and the distinctive quality of
matter is Form. This is a radical distinction from which important
consequences follow, and should, therefore, be carefully noted by the
student.
Form implies
extension in space and also limitation within certain boundaries. Thought
implies neither. When, therefore, we think of Life as existing in any
particular form we associate it with the idea of extension in
space, so that an elephant may be said to consist of a vastly larger
amount of living substance than a mouse. But if we think of Life as the
fact of livingness we do not associate it with any idea of extension, and
we at once realize that the mouse is quite as much alive as the elephant,
notwithstanding the difference in size. The important point of this
distinction is that if we can conceive of anything as entirely devoid of
the element of extension in space, it must be present in its entire
totality anywhere and everywhere—that is to say, at every point of space
simultaneously. The scientific definition of time is that it is the period
occupied by a body in passing from one given point in space to another,
and, therefore, according to this definition, when there is no space there
can be no time; and hence that conception of spirit which realizes it as
devoid of the element of space must realize it as being devoid of the
element of time also; and we therefore find that the conception of spirit
as pure Thought, and not as concrete Form, is the conception of it as
subsisting perfectly independently of the elements of time and space. From
this it follows that if the idea of anything is conceived as existing on
this level it can only represent that thing as being actually present here
and now. In this view of things nothing can be remote from us either in
time or space: either the idea is entirely dissipated or it exists as an
actual present entity, and not as something that shall be in the
future, for where there is no sequence in time there can be no future.
Similarly where there is no space there can be no conception of anything
as being at a distance from us. When the elements of time and space are
eliminated all our ideas of things must necessarily be as subsisting in a
universal here and an everlasting now. This is, no doubt, a highly
abstract conception, but I would ask the student to endeavour to grasp it
thoroughly, since it is of vital importance in the practical application
of Mental Science, as will appear further on.
The opposite
conception is that of things expressing themselves through conditions of
time and space and thus establishing a variety of relations to
other things, as of bulk, distance, and direction, or of sequence in time.
These two conceptions are respectively the conception of the abstract and
the concrete, of the unconditioned and the conditioned, of the absolute
and the relative. They are not opposed to each other in the sense of
incompatibility, but are each the complement of the other, and the only
reality is in the combination of the two. The error of the extreme
idealist is in endeavouring to realize the absolute without the relative,
and the error of the extreme materialist is in endeavouring to realize the
relative without the absolute. On the one side the mistake is in trying to
realize an inside without an outside, and on the other in trying to
realize an outside without an inside; both are necessary to the formation
of a substantial entity. |
