Id 



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, &c. 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 ail 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 (a) who appears to 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 is imagined to 

 have been evolved, and from it have been developed by its own 

 innate power the strategy of a Wellington or a Napoleon, 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 he&n 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." (d). 



(a) Herbert Spencer, 

 (c^ "We may think over the subject again and again, but it eludes all intellectual 

 presentation. We stand at length face to face with the incomprehensible." 

 Tyndall, Fragments of Science, Vol. II., p. 394. 

 " I 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.'- 

 Huxley, Contemp. Review, Nov. 1871. 

 (cl) Dallinger's Fernley Lecture, p. 45. 



