224 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



the canvas. If, therefore, our intellect endows even the ma- 

 terial objects, which it perceives, with a dematerialized or 

 spiritualized mode of representation, it follows that the in- 

 tellect itself is a spiritual power and not an organic sense 

 immersed in concretifying and individualizing matter. Cer- 

 tainly, this ideal or spiritualized mode of existence does not 

 emanate from the material object without nor yet from its 

 vicarious material image in our organic imagination (which, in 

 point of fact, is absolutely impotent to imagine anything ex- 

 cept concrete, singular things in all their determinate in- 

 dividuation and quantification). Thought, then, with its ab- 

 stract mode of presentation, cannot, like imagery, be sub- 

 jected in the animated or soul-informed cortex, but must have 

 the spiritual mind alone as its receptive subject. Our abstract 

 or dematerialized mode of conceiving material objects is a 

 subjective character of thought, proceeding from, and mani- 

 festing, the spirituality of the human mind, which represents 

 even material objects in a manner that accords with its own 

 spiritual nature. 



But it is not only in the process of abstraction, but also 

 in that of reflection, that rational thought manifests its super- 

 organic or spiritual character. The human mind knows that 

 it knows and understands that it understands, thinks of its 

 own thoughts and of itself as the agent and subject of its 

 thinking. It is conscious of its own conscious acts, that is 

 to say, it reflects upon itself and its own acts, becoming an 

 object to itself. The thinking ego becomes an object of 

 observation on the part of the thinking ego, which acquires self- 

 knowledge by this process of reflective thought. In intro- 

 spection, that which observes is identical with that which is 

 observed. Now such a capacity of self-observation cannot 

 reside in matter, cannot be spatially commensurate with a 

 material organ nor inseparably attached thereto. It is pos- 

 sible only to an immaterial or spiritual principle, devoid of 

 mass and extension, and not subject to the law of the im- 



