THE

BIBLIOTHECA SACRA.

ARTICLE I.

THE PASSAGE FROM MIND TO MATTER.

BY PROFESSOR JACOB COOPER, D.C.L., LL.D.

THE PROBLEM OF PHILOSOPHY.

THE passage from the world without to that within us is the problem which in some form has ever confronted philosophy. The impossibility of two apparently disparate powers acting on each other is disproven by the fact of their constant interaction, which is the basis and indispensable condition of all knowledge of material nature. The common sense of mankind is in accord with that philosophic view, which has generally prevailed since men began to examine their own thoughts, that there are two sorts of being in the world,-Mind and Matter; for this Dualistic theory agrees with phenomena, and requires no effort to accept because it appeals both to sense-perceptions and the deductions we derive from them. Consciousness reveals to us an agent which we call ourselves. This receives impressions from something without which we know to be different from the Ego both in position and mode of action. The mind, acting on these sense-perceptions by a power which belongs to itself, discovers the modes by which this external something acts upon it, systematizes these modes of action, terms them laws of matter; and in VOL. LVIII. No. 229. I

turn employs these laws to gain insight, in order to control that part of the world with which we come in touch.

While the Dualistic view has been the prevailing one, there have been many profound thinkers who held to Monism, i.e., that all Reality is one. On this theory the apparent difference between what are called mind and matter does not at bottom indicate diverse essences, but the same under different manifestations. But this view as held hitherto requires a diversity in the mode of action so great that it involves virtually the same Dualism as the other, which recognizes two essentially different agents. For there is necessarily a passage from one factor to the other, a bridge to be crossed of equal width whether the factors which act on each other are disparate in their nature or only in phenomena. For one is active, the other passive; the one conscious subject, the other unconscious object; the one commands, the other obeys; and, in order to effect this, there must be a passage from one to the other, whatever be the space between them. In the strictest Monism of Sankhya philosophy, according to which the outward. world is wholly illusory, the phenomena which the mind perceives are not the mind itself, but impressions conveyed to it by the "five gateways of knowledge." It is evident that such an explanation of Nature is a paralogism. For, if there be illusion, there must be something to cause, and something to receive, the illusion; if there be gateways of knowledge for even deception to enter, these must come from somewhere and be caused by something. For, if the mind deceived itself, the deception could not come through any gate. The senses would have no office in the bringing of illusion; the mind would have nothing to interpret but its own thoughts; and any other knowledge than of the mind itself would be impossible. It is therefore undeniable, that, according to the strictest Monism, the mind is the actor, and the phenomena, no matter how illusory,

are the materials acted upon; and the two must in some way be brought together.

GREEK PHILOSOPHY, DUALISTIC.

In the Greek philosophy, which is the highest exponent of human thought, however its speculations be modified, it was assumed that the mind is a factor which acts on something different from itself. This is alike true in the crass materialism of Democritus and the refined idealism of Plato. For, in the process of thought, the mind in some way acted and was acted upon, which implied two agents or factors. It they were both material, they occupied different spaces; if they were spiritual, one was in so gross a form that the other could never act properly until it got completely free from its trammels. So, in every conceivable interpretation of sense-perception, consciousness reveals a distinction between that which makes the impression and that which receives it; and hence the problem still confronts us, how to explain the mode of this intercommunication. This is the stumbling-block standing at the threshold of all speculation, demanding some explanation, or compelling the admission of ignorance. None of the solutions from the dawn of speculation till the researches of Carpenter or Virchow, by their own confession, bring us any nearer to that which is essential in the process. The explanations are in every case talking round, rather than directly at, the question. We may enumerate the methods of treatment as follows:

A. THEORY OF DUALISM.

Those made on the assumption that mind and matter are diametrically opposed; not differing in degree merely,

Plato, Phaedo, 8ο Ε. ; 81 A. St., ἐὰν μὲν καθαρὰ ἀπαλλάττηται, μηδὲν τοῦ σώματος ξυνεφέλκουσα, ἅτε ουδεν κοινωνοῦσα αὐτῶ ἐν τῷ βίῳ ἐκοῦσα εἶναι, ἀλλὰ φεύγουσα αὐτὸ καὶ συνηθροισμένη αὐτὴ εἰς αὐτήν τοῦτο δὲοὐδὲν ἄλλο ἐστίν ἡ ὀρθῶς φιλοσοφοῦσα, κ.τ.λ.

but having nothing in common, This is distinctively Dualism; and gives us at least the satisfaction that we can see what is attempted; that is, to explain how things utterly opposed can have any commerce together. For it is known, by constant experience, that this does take place; and this fact is a perpetual challenge to explain how and where this is effected. Four different theories have been held, to explain this process: I. Occasional causes, or the direct intervention of God in each act; 2. Preëstablished harmony between the actions of mind and matter; 3. Plastic medium; 4. Physical influence. But these all fail at the very point where an explanation is needed. They profess to tell what causes the interaction, but not how it is done. The difficulty, or rather impossibility, of a solution from this point of view has led to Monism; which, very often, has been expressed in the form of pure Materialism, where the process of sensation and its elaborated product, thought, are explained by mechanical means, without any potency or action existing any where apart from movement among the particles of matter composing the compound organism. While there are motions among the molecules of the brain, they are automatic; wholly spontaneous in receiving and acting upon sense-perception in the elaboration of thought. Consciousness seems to testify that sense-perception is the result of action by external nature upon our bodily organism. That there should be a consciousness is, however, surreptitiously assumed by the materialist, because it is contrary to our a priori conceptions and our whole experience, that matter can think or move itself. Another agent is imperatively demanded. It is only by doing violence to words in their common acceptation as the vehicles of thought, that we can conceive a machine to move itself. Pure material Monism is the folly of perpetual motion, the bête noire of science, called in for the explanation of mental action.

There is no analogy discernible from experience which permits a resolution of the thinking process into the independent action of matter to achieve a purpose. For all physical science deals with the application of force by an intelligence acting ab extra; and assumes matter to be merely the instrument through which it is transmitted or applied.

B. THEORY OF MONISM.

In the forms of Monism, whether we view it as denying the reality of an external world, as taught by the Indian and the Chinese philosophy, or the pure Idea of Hegel developing itself, a similar difficulty occurs. It denies our experience, and does violence to our commonsense. We are quite as sure of our material organism, as an instrument of action, as we are that we can think, will, and direct our energies to a definite result. For how could we influence our bodies to action, and achieve our purposes through that action, from the simplest bodily movement to the most complicated results of science, if these material organs did not exist? The result achieved demonstrates the certain existence of the factors employed. That there are two factors always necessary for action, i.e., the machinery and the power to propel it, is undeniable; save by such a subversion of our modes of thought and action as would prove the postulate of agnosticism to be absurd, by its efforts to establish its own doctrine. And that these two act in concert, so that the one is the agent of the other, is unquestionable. How nearly alike must be the material and the immaterial, if they are different, is seen in the close resemblance between the animal life and the power of thought. But still they must, in their present constitution, be different, even if they are not disparate; as may be seen in the case of the idiotic, who have the one factor in complete activity, while wholly destitute of the other. So, again, from disease or other sources of bodily weakness,