Читать книгу THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE - Thomas Troward - Страница 5

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.