Читать книгу The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Various - Страница 3

A Query for the Thoughtful.—May we not justly say that spirit, everywhere, in its various degrees, rules over matter, setting its forces at defiance for the time, and yet never interfering with their continued operations?

This seems a great law of the universe. The power of life, wherever guided by will, whether in beast or man, or even where we can only venture to speak of instinct, thus asserts its superiority. Within its appointed range, the laws of the material world are evidently subject to its control. Iron may be firmly held together by the attraction of cohesion: but man wills its severance, and it is effected.

Nor does it contravene the general assertion here made, that we act by opposing one natural force to another. The rising of the sledge hammer, to fall with a force more than its own, is just as much against the laws of matter as the breaking of the iron beneath its blows.

All power, so far as we can judge, is spiritual—i.e., originates in spirit, and is exerted in obedience to will, or to something equivalent.

Nor, again, will it avail an objector to say that spirit is also under law as well as matter. The laws of the one sphere, at all events, are not those of the other. They may have their relations, but they are not those of equality. Spirit is sovereign—matter subject; or, if in any case it should be otherwise, it is from some weak refusal of the spirit to assert its own power.