242 SPIRIT INCONCEIVABLE TO TJS. 



fessor Bain is also ambiguous, for although he says,. 

 " We have every reason for believing that there is an 



tinct powers to " essences." To be sure he knows a great deal about 

 material elements, but, alas ! what does he, or any one else, know 

 about essences ? And yet how easily he settles how much each par- 

 ticular essence can do! Many persons not, of course, including the 

 above-named confound immaterial with spiritual. All force and 

 action, every event or process, including life and mind, are, of course^ 

 immaterial in one sense, although dependent on matter. A spirit is 

 supposed to be a substance capable of existence per se, but without the 

 inherent properties of matter, and is therefore spoken of as an imma- 

 terial substance. The word immaterial has here a different sense. 

 But of such an immaterial substance the human mind can form no true 

 conception. For I hold as irrefragable the aphorism of Aristotle, 

 " Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu ;" especially as 

 rendered by Fletcher viz., the human mind can conceive nothing, the 

 elements of which were not first perceived through the senses. For 

 instance, we can imagine golden mountains, mermaids, flying fiery 

 dragons, and all kinds of non-existent things ; but gold, women, fish r 

 fire, wings, and serpents were all already known to us through the 

 senses. In like manner all sensation depends on changes in protoplasm 

 produced by stimuli, which are either the incorporation of matter it- 

 self, or they are force, which is an affection of matter. We have thus 

 no knowledge of the external world at all, except as matter and 

 force, and therefore our minds can form no conception, properly so 

 called, of anything except what pertains to matter and force, or their 

 actions. The truth of this is seen at once by the incongruity and 

 absurdity of all attempts to picture to ourselves the nature of spirits, 

 which all result in merely some fanciful combinations or omissions of 

 the properties and forces of matter which we are familiar with in their 

 gross and concrete state. Witness the notion of the likeness of a spirit 

 to an attenuated gas or vapour, which has descended from the child- 

 hood of the world a very unfortunate illustration to pitch upon, 

 seeing that a gas is the thing we know with the most absolute certainty 

 never to be possessed of life, or even form. Or take a more refined idea. 

 "Conceive," says the author of the classical Beligio Medici, "conceive 

 light invisible and that is spirit " (xxxiii.). Since the true nature of 

 the invisible rays of light is known, can anything show more strongly 

 the futility of the efforts of the human mind to form any conception, 

 worthy of the name, of immaterial substance ? Nor can we obtain any 

 knowledge of the nature of powers, entities, in telligences, and personalities 

 existingindependently of matter and force, by means of natural science,for 

 that is concerned solely with the invariable phenomena of matter and 

 force cognizable to us from sensation and experience. But it is surely 

 a shallow philosophy which would deny the possible existence of other 

 modes of being than those conceivable' to human beings ; or even that 

 human beings might attain to a knowledge of the existence of suck 



