18 
MIND AND MATTER. 
It has long been believed that Mind and Matter, although closely 
connected, yet, are in their properties utterly unlike each other ; 
that these properties are in fact so diametrically opposed, that. we 
cannot possibly imagine the same substratum endowed with both 
sets at the same time. Matter possesses among other properties 
weight, extent, divisibility, impenetrability, &¢. Mind possesses 
none of these. Who can speak of the length of a choice, the weight 
of fear, or the geometrical shape of anger ? Physically matter can 
be divided into molecules, chemically into atoms, but who shall 
perform such operations on Mind? ‘This infinite unlikeness has 
to thinking men of all ages been so evident that mankind long ago 
came to the conclusion that there must necessarily be two sub- 
stances in existence, one material, the other im-material, each 
endowed with its own peculiar set of properties. But now we are 
frequently told by scientific and metaphysical authorities that 
Matter itself, as matter, contains all the promise and potency of 
life. One of our greatest thinkers (2) who appears +o fully believe 
in the wide gap existent between Mind and Matter, nevertheless 
believes that matter in itself developed mind. If so, then all 
connected with mind,—emotion, intellect, and will,—were once 
latent in the nebulous haze from which our universe 1s imagined to 
have been evolved, and from it have been developed by its own 
innate power the strategy of a Wellington or a N apoleon, the genius 
which inspired Shakespeare’s Plays, the magnificent enthusiasm of 
humanity evinced by a Howard or a Gordon. But if these two 
substances are so utterly opposite in their natures, if there is a gap 
between them, (c) on the brink of which the intellect stands be- 
wildered, and helpless to cross it, how can we readily believe that 
mind, the sentient, the conscious, that which can perceive, and 
originate, has ever been the mere product of inert, blind matter ? 
‘The unknown y, that is matter, must by sheer physical vicissitudes, 
actually abnegate its own qualities, and emerge, no longer itself y, 
but another entity, infinitely unlike itself, that is, x! If Mind and 
Matter are divergent from each other by infinite unlikeness of 
quality, the mind refuses assent, that any process, based on the 
foundation of accurate human knowledge, would sanction the 
emergence of mind by physical processes from matter. Mind is the 
antithesis, and cannot be a function of matter.” (a). 
(a) Herbert Spencer. 
(c) “We may think over the subject again and again, but it eludes all intellectual 
presentation. We stand atlength face to face with the incomprehensible.” 
‘ Tyndall, Fragments of Science, Vol. II., p, 394. 
“T know nothing whatever, and never hope to know anything of the steps by which 
the passage from molecular. movement to states of consciousness is effected.” 
in ieee . Review, Nov. 1871. 
(d) Dallinger's Fernley Lecture, p.' 45. 
