That spirit or mind has a relation to space, is evident from the fact
of its location in the body. The body itself exists in space, therefore
every particle of substance which it contains must exist in space.
No point can be assumed in the body but what has a relation to the
surrounding space or extension. Therefore spirit must have a relation
to extension or it cannot exist in the body. All unextended points
have a relation to space, though they are no part of space, and do not
occupy space; but an unextended substance to have no relation to space
cannot be as much as a point. A point is a _located_ nothing, but an
unextended substance is nothing, having no _location._
What can be more unphilosophical, contradictory, and absurd, than to
assume that something can exist that is "unextended,"--that "occupies
no room, fills no space,"--has "no parts?" We ask our readers to pause
for a moment, and endeavour to conceive of a substance that has no
parts. Grasp it if you can in your imaginations. Think of its existing
where there is no space. Conceive, if you can in your imaginations.
Think of its existing where there is no space. Conceive, if you can,
of a locality outside of the bounds of a boundless space. Do not
your judgments, and every power of your minds revolt at the absolute
absurdities and palpable contradictions? By this time, perhaps, you
are ready to inquire, can it be possible that any man in all the world
could believe in such impossibilities? Yes, it is possible. These very
absurdities now stand in bold relief, not only in the most approved
philosophical works of modern times, but incorporated in the very
"Articles of Religion" which millions have received as their rule of
faith.
That spirit or mind has a relation to duration is manifest in the act
of remembering. Through the memory the mind perceives itself to be
the same conscious being _now_, that it was, an hour, a day, a year
ago; it perceives that itself has existed through a certain period of
duration. There is as much certainty of its own relations to duration
as there is of any such relation in any other substance whatever. If
there is no certainty that mind has a relation to duration, there is
no certainty that any other substance has such a relation; hence all
would be uncertainty, even our own existence. Bishop Berkeley denied
the existence of the material world, and the first Article of his
religion swept away the immaterial world from _space;_ and the modern
immaterialist sweeps it away from all relation to _time_. So between
them all, space and time are pretty well cleaned out; not so much as a
nest egg left to replenish the great infinite void.
Mind, like all other matter, is susceptible of being moved from
place to place. We see this exemplified in the movements of the mind
through the medium of the body which conveys it from place to place
on the surface of the earth. But though man was stationary upon the
earth's surface, the earth itself with all its inhabitants, is moving
with the rapid velocity of nineteen miles every second, which proves
to a demonstration that mind is capable of being moved from place
to place with a velocity far exceeding that of a cannon ball. But
_motion_ involves the ideas of both space and time. Mind cannot be
moved without being moved in space; it cannot pass from point to point
instantaneously. However rapid the velocity, time is an essential
ingredient to all motion. That eminent and profound philosopher, the
late Professor Robison of Edinburgh, says, "In motion we observe the
_successive_ appearance of the thing moved in _different_ parts of
space. Therefore, in our idea of motion are involved the ideas or
conceptions of space and time."
"All things are placed in space, in the order of situation. All events
happen in time, in the order of succession."
"No motion can be conceived as instantaneous. For, since a moveable,
in passing from the beginning to the end of its path, passes through
the intermediate points; to suppose the motion along the most minute
portion of the path instantaneous, is to suppose the moveable in
every intervening point at the same instant. This is inconceivable
and absurd." (Robison's Mechanical Philosophy. Vol I. Introduction.)
The motion of mind, therefore is another positive proof that it has a
relation to both space and duration.
"Extension and resistance," says Dr. Thomas Brown, "are the complex
elements of what we term matter; and nothing is matter to our
conception, or a body, to use the simpler synonymous term which does
not involve these elements." Figure, magnitude, divisibility, are only
different modifications of extension. Solidity, liquidity, viscidity,
hardness, softness, roughness, smoothness, are different modifications
of resistance. All these terms are only extension and resistance,
modified in a certain degree, and under other names. Our notion of
extension is supposed by Dr. Brown to be acquired from our notion of
time as successive, involving length and divisibility. Our notion of
resistance he supposes to be obtained through our muscular organs.
These organs are first exerted, and then excited by something without,
and in their turn excite the mind with a feeling of resistance. The
feeling of resistance combined with the feeling of extension gives
us the notion of matter. If Dr. Brown's views be correct, no one can
acquire a notion of matter, by seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling,
or simple touch. Either or all of these will only produce certain
feelings in the mind without giving us any notion of an external
extended resistance. A muscular effort opposed by some substance or
foreign body is the only possible way, according to his theory, for
the infant mind to obtain a notion of extended solidity or resistance.
(Brown's Philosophy of the Human Mind. From the XX to the XXIX Lecture
inclusive.)
If solidity and extension then are the essential characteristics of
matter; and if the resistance of a muscular effort be the only possible
way of learning these characteristics; it may be asked, how did Dr.
Brown learn that the rays of light are material? He has frequently in
his philosophy called light material. Has light in any way resisted his
muscular efforts? Have the muscular organs ever been able to grasp a
ray of light? Have the particles of light either singly or collectively
ever acted upon our muscular organs in such manner as to give us a
notion of extension and resistance? Have they ever affected the mind in
any way only to impart to it the feeling of color? Does not Dr. Brown
himself repeatedly affirm, that light can only impart the sensation
of color; and that extension, magnitude, figure, solidity, can never
be known by the sense of seeing? Does he not assert, that "nothing is
matter to our conception which does not involve these elements?" Why
then does he assume light to be material?
If, then, light can be ranked as a material substance without
exhibiting the least resistance to the muscular organs, why not mind or
spirit be considered material also? Why believe that light consists of
inconceivably small vibratory or emanating particles of matter from the
mere affection of mind called color, and yet be unwilling to believe
that the mind affected is material? If that which produces a sensation
or feeling be regarded a solid extended substance, independently of
muscular resistance, where is the impropriety, in regarding that which
receives the sensation or feeling, as a solid extended substance also?
Dr. Brown, and all other immaterialists, universally believe that the
sensation of smell is produced by small material particles, acting
upon our olfactory nerves. But we ask, how is Dr. Brown or any other
person to determine those odorous particles to be material? It may be
said, that we determine them to be solid and extended by tracing them
to the substances from which they emanate. But can it be proved that
they constitute any part of the solid extended substance from which
they emanate, any more than light is a part of the substance from
which it emanates? We know a rose to be solid and extended, not from
the sensation of vision or smell, but from the sensation of resistance
which it offers to our muscular organs when we attempt to grasp it. But
because a rose is solid and extended, that does not prove that light
and fragrance, by which we discern its color and smell, are any part of
the rose.
If Dr. Brown's theory be true, it is absolutely impossible to prove
that the odoriferous particles which affect us with the sensation of
fragrance, are a solid extended substance. These particles of odour
appear, indeed, to have been connected in some way with bodies from
which they emanate; but there is no possible means for the muscular
powers to determine them to be parts of those bodies, any more than
the colored light or the heat which are also transmitted from them. No
one in speaking of a rose would think of classifying heat and light
as a portion of its solid substance; yet both heat and light, like
the particles of odour, are intimately connected with it, and are
constantly being thrown off from it.
"What is there," inquires Dr. Brown, "which we can discover in the
mere sensation of fragrance, that is itself significant of solidity,
extension, or whatever we may regard as essential to the existence
of things without? As a mere change in the form of our being, it may
suggest to us the necessity of some cause or antecedent of the change.
But it is far from implying the necessity of a corporeal cause;--any
more than such a direct corporeal cause is implied in any other
modification of our being, intellectual or moral--in our belief, for
example, of the most abstract truth, at which we may have arrived by
a slow development of proposition after proposition in a process of
internal reflective analysis, or in the most refined and sublime of
our emotions, when, without thinking of any one of the objects around,
we have been meditating on the divinity who formed them--himself the
purest of spiritual existences. Our belief of a system of external
things, then, does not, as far as we can judge from the nature of the
feelings, arise from our sensations of smell, more than from any of our
internal pleasures or pains." (Brown's Philosophy of the Human Mind.
Lecture XX.)
Odorous particles, then, have never been submitted to Dr. Brown's only
test of materiality, and yet he, and all other immaterialists, without
any hesitation, pronounce them to be matter. The spirit, like these
particles of odour, can exist in connexion with the body or separate
from it; and yet it forms no part of the fleshy tabernacle. If like
the particles of odour, it really eludes the grasp of the muscular
organs, and if neither these odoriferous particles, nor the spirit, can
be proved by any muscular effort to have solidity and extension; why,
then, should one be called _material,_ and the other _immaterial?_
If the mind be unextended, how can it receive any sensations from
things without? It could not act upon bodily organs, for they are
extended. Neither could bodily organs act upon it.
Philosophers have endeavoured to invent numberless hypothesis to
account for the action of matter on the mind, which they have assumed
to be immaterial. The old Peripatetic doctrine of perception, by
species or phantasms, which for so many centuries held so unlimited
a sway in the philosophic world, was probably originated to connect
material with immaterial substances. When this absurdity slowly died
away, other hypothesis, no less erroneous, immediately supplied its
place. Des Cartes, seeing no possibility of any reciprocal action
between matter and something that was inextended, invented his system
of occasional causes, and represented the external world entirely
incapable of affecting the mind in any way whatever. He ascribed all
the sensations and affections of the mind to the immediate agency of
the Deity, virtually rendering external objects entirely useless to
the mind. This conjecture has been modified by succeeding philosophers
without, however, removing its absurdities. It is useless to revert
to all the absurd theories which have from time to time distracted
the metaphysical world, and which have been originated for no other
purpose than to uphold the still greater absurdity of immaterialism.
Philosophers of ancient times imagined the existence of an immaterial
substance, unextended in its nature, like nothing. To support this
wild and vague imagination, learned metaphysicians have given birth to
innumerable conjectures, in order to connect this imaginary substance
with the material world.
Dr. Brown, however, being a little more wise than the immaterialists
who preceded him, does not attempt to connect the mutual affections,
existing between matter and mind, by substituting some conjectural
intervening _causes._ Instead of this, he advocates the direct
affection of the mind by the presence of material objects--that the
change of state in the one is produced by the change of state in the
other, independently of intervening causes. Now this, in our view, is
really what happens.
We believe that matter can only act upon mind because mind is an
extended material substance. But Dr. Brown supposes there is no
absurdity in matter acting upon that which is unextended. He endeavours
to substantiate the possibility of the direct mutual affections of mind
and matter, by referring to some examples of matter acting upon matter
as in gravitation. (Brown's Philosophy of the Human Mind. Lecture
XXX.) But we do not conceive these cases to be in the least analogous;
for there is no absurdity in supposing one extended substance to act
upon another which is also extended. But for extended substances
with parts to act upon unextended substances is without a parallel,
and inconceivably absurd. Indeed there could be no action at all;
an immaterial mind could not act upon an immaterial mind any more
than nothing could act upon nothing. To talk about matter affecting
that which is inextended and without parts, is to talk about matter
affecting nothing.
The very fact of the external organs affecting the mind without any
intervening cause, the same as other matter affects other matter, is an
argument of the strongest kind in favour of the materiality of mind. A
piece of iron is affected in a certain manner by introducing into its
presence a loadstone, so the mind is affected in a certain manner by
the presence of light upon the retina, or by the presence or odour upon
the olfactory nerve. If, then, mind can be directly affected by other
substances, the same as matter directly affects matter, why should it
be called an immaterial substance?
If resistance to our muscular efforts, as Dr. Brown supposes, be our
only test of solidity and extension, and consequently of matter, then
mind itself has the greatest claims to materiality. A muscular effort
is nothing more than an effort of the mind. Without the mind the
muscles are incapable of any effort whatsoever. Two men stretch out
their arms, press their hands together, and resist each other with
great force. In this example as it is commonly said, the muscular
efforts of the one are resisted by the muscular efforts of the other;
but as the muscles have no power of themselves, the facts of the case
are, that the mind of the one truly resists the mind of the other
through the medium of their respective muscles. If that which causes
resistance then be material, mind must be material.
If two bodies of iron of equal size were moving with equal velocities
towards each other, upon meeting they would destroy each others
motion, and the next moment, though in contact, there would be no
signs of resistance; not so with the resistance which mind offers to
mind through the medium of the muscular organs; the resistance can be
continued at the option of the two resisting minds; hence mind exhibits
resistance in a greater degree than other substances, and should,
therefore, according to Dr. Brown's test, be considered material in
preference to all other substances.
No two atoms of spirit or any other matter can occupy two or more
places at the same time. We have never known of a circumstance of the
spirit of man residing in the body and out of it at the same time. No
particles of light, odour, heat, electricity, can occupy two places
at once. These substances can only be extensively diffused by being
extensive in quantity. The particles of light which enter the right eye
are not the same which enter the left eye. Though their qualities may
be exactly alike, yet they are separate individual substance, as much
so as if they were millions of miles asunder. The same is true of the
atoms of spirit and all other substances.