Читать книгу The Philosophy Which Shows the Physiology of Mesmerism and Explains the Phenomenon of Clairvoyance - T. H. Pasley - Страница 8

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By the popular expression, "Evidence of the Senses," is universally understood, the perception, or seeing external bodies by the organs of sense: yet externals are invisible and the senses insentient. This mistake, common among the fathers of every age, has corrupted the prevalent false philosophy tenfold.

The eye is not possessed of sight; neither is colour a property of matter, or it must be indestructible by fire and every other means. The senses should be considered as but mechanical agents for exciting the brain; by which means it is we have our knowledge, the particulars of the whole of which are mental, confined to the brain, and consist, solely, in the cerebral excited scenery of the sensorium. We have no other kind or means of acquiring knowledge, that is, mental information. By the mere organs of sense we know nothing. The knowledge we have by means of the senses exciting the brain, consists in sensations or sensible effects, and, we know nothing but our knowledge, whatever may be thought of externals being objects and immediate objects of our knowledge.

In describing what we know, it is imagined the description is of external bodies, their appearance, qualities, and properties; which, however harmless the mistake throughout busy-life affairs—as all abide, judge, and are directed by the same kind of evidence—not so is it in philosophy, which is a description of nature's own mode of procedure; and although it is impossible to describe invisible things, as they are really, they should not be philosophised and reasoned on, as they are not; they are not according to what we know, and can have no resemblance in any manner to sensations, which are all we know by means of them. Instead of knowing by the senses what bodies are, we know only what they are not; modern philosophy is regardless, totally heedless of this most instructive most pointedly directing information, instead of making the just allowance for mental appearances, it materializes every sensation, and imputes the whole to the bodies outside of our own, of which all we can possibly know is but inferential knowledge: it considers our sensations as being qualities of bodies or properties of matter, and maintains that some are physical causes by which certain physical effects are produced. Such may be considered some of the principal reasons why clairvoyance is unintelligible to all the most learned; and so must it ever remain, or until a truer philosophy arises and rescues the great subject from the darkness and errors of a perverting philosophy, the whole of which has to be abandoned before the mind is fitted for the reception of natural truths. We must cease to identify sensations with their unseen, unknown, and but promoting, material causes. In proof of the foregoing, a short review of the senses, their physiology, function, result of the function and use of the result, must prove satisfactory and convincing.

The physiology of a sense, consists in an external organ—as the eye or ear, its nerves of sensation which spread through the brain, and, the nervous fluid. To each of the senses there belongs a distinct cerebral organ, which, if deducted, leaves nothing to constitute the physiology, but the external organ, the nerves, and nervous fluid; such may be considered the physiology of all the senses, so far as the exciting mental perception is concerned.

The function of a sense is, to act on and excite the cerebral organ, when the nervous fluid is put into an acting state through external circumstances.

The result of the function, is a sensation, of which we have immediate cognizance, by reason of a sensation being a recent change in consciousness. The nervous fluid, not the tubular nervous striæ, is that by which the brain is excited.

The use of the sensation is manifold. Emanating from the wonderful Economy, is the law, that, the sensation which an external body promotes, shall, to ourself, seem to belong to that body.

The law is imperative. The sensation being apparently at, and belonging to, the external object or body, it is imagined the body is visible, seen by the eyes, and of the colour, flavour, or odour known by the sensation. The apparent place of the sensation directs to where the body is situated.

No person thinks, when a rose promotes the sensation of colour, that the object perceived is within himself: without the sensation there is no perception of red, and with it, nothing is perceived or seen of colour or of the flower; so that, were the object coloured or not, it is to the spectator invisible; and as the sensation would be useless were the object coloured and seen, it is obvious that the flower is uncoloured, therefore is not seen: the seeing an uncoloured object is a physical absurdity. So is it with all sensations; they constitute the only objects of perception with which we are acquainted; and, such as they are in any respect, the outward objects are in no respect. Sound is a sensation; a sense has been provided that we should have knowledge of sound; there is nothing of sound or noise in the air; the function of the sense is not to hear, but excite the auditory cerebral organ, and the sensation, in which alone sound consists, seems to be outside of us, and seems to come from a bell, but which has nothing of the kind to part with; yet it is imagined that sound enters the ear. Thus is it supposed that the sensation externally exists, and is sound heard by the ear. The philosopher so instructed, calculates the velocity of the physical nonentity sound.

Luminousness, light, colour, sound, heat, cold, flavour, odour, are sensations—each of the entire is traceable from the function of the senses to the sensorium: deduct these, there is nothing perceived or to perceive; by means of the senses, respectively, we have knowledge of each—and by the senses exciting the brain are the whole produced, as sensible effects. Outward bodies can have nothing the same or similar to sensible effects; and therefore nothing of the whole belongs to matter or bodies, or to physical philosophy. To mechanical nature the whole would be useless; to sensitive beings only are they useful; to us they are substitutes for Nature's deficiency in these respects; and the whole present a convincing proof of the wise, the strict economy of the Great Architect in his works.

The objection is unfounded, that the external object should be like the sensation, in order to produce such sensation. But where is there sound in musical string or in the metal of a bell to promote the sensation; or yellow in the snowdrop to promote the sensation of yellow, when the eyes are jaundiced or a stained lens is before them: the sensation of pain is not the effect of pain; it and pain are one. That which in health promotes the sensation known as sweet, promotes that of bitter in sickness; the object is the same, the sensation changeable. In reason it cannot be said that fire is like the sensation, or the latter should be burning hot in the brain, where it is excited; neither is any material thing outside of us like a sensation of the brain; nor does the sensation inform us of anything but itself, excepting that it has a remote external cause. The common show-box exhibits the same landscape picture under the different aspects of summer, autumn, winter, and spring, according to the stained lens before the eyes; the picture has not all these colours, nor any, it is a mere black and white print, in which the stained lenses make no alteration. Nothing can be like a sensation but a sensation.

That the objects we perceive and their remote cause are distinct things, is proved by the perception being that of a coin of the half-crown size, when the eyes are directed to a shilling and a convex lens before the face; if the lens be red, yellow, or blue, so is the perceived object, which is not the white shilling. We are invisible to each other; what is imagined to be a man's appearance, may be described as, various sensations of different colours symmetrically arranged, and constituting a single optically-excited mental effect. Neither is it the likeness of the sitter that the canvass exhibits, but the excited perception within the sensorium of the limner; for the renewal of which it is that he directs his eyes so frequently to the sitter's face, which is invisible to the limner, although he feels certain that he sees every feature.

Those who imagine the eye-balls look and see, and that externals and the perceptions they promote are the same, should, upon reflection, attribute sight to their spectacles; for, as sight is nothing bettered when the glasses are removed, so should the temporary improvement be referred to the spectacles having sight as well as the eyes.

In consequence of all mankind being similarly organised, that which seems coloured, sonorous, hot, acid, or aromatic to one person, is so to every one else with sane eyes and senses; by which unanimity of opinion, in these respects, prevails throughout the great family of man, in the worldly concerns of active life, and the social compact is maintained indissoluble.

The all-wise, benevolent dispensation of the senses, by which man's existence is supplied with enjoyments not in all nature otherwise to bestow; and his intellectual faculties provided with means of contemplating the attributes of his Maker through his knowledge, such as it is, of the creation, which makes known to us not only God's regard for his creatures, but his supreme omniscience in the economy made manifest throughout all his works. Were bodies coloured as we imagine, there should be an element of each red, yellow, and blue atoms; elements of sound, heat, and cold; elements of flavour and odour innumerable: whereas, by the substitution of sensations, matter without any such qualities, or any whatever, excepting that of being everlasting, is made subservient to the formation of a universe of worlds, teeming with beauty, harmony, and wonders; all contributing to the comfort, enjoyment, happiness, edification, and future hope of its sojourning inhabitants.

Now, when from the established philosophy we deduct gravitation, attraction and repulsion, which are as foreign to inert matter as vitality to the dead—the host of chymicals, so repugnant to the principle of inertia—the imaginary living principles, erroneously imputed to the mechanical organs of the animal system—the sensations of luminousness, light, colour, sound, heat, cold, acidity, and of flavours and odours—when the entire of these unphysical, mere nominals, are deducted from modern philosophy, there remains nothing whatever to produce action, physical change, or motion, excepting pressure, which has been always looked upon as a mere adjunct to the imagined numerous powers of nature. When common sense has rejected the whole, then will the philosophy of the Fathers be valued by the world, as would be a garment with more holes than threads.