Matter is the name given to the most general idea we can form of
objects. It is supposed to cover all of them. In other words, the
content or 'essence' of the idea is the attribute or attributes
common to all objects without exception. It is the universal objective
minimum--the least objective experience consistent with the experience
being objective. Some have attempted to define this general idea more
precisely by identifying it with some _abstract_ property such as
extension, resistance, etc. An object may be material without offering
any resistance to human energy, as a beam of light. A material object
may also be without extension, as a sound or smell. The only quality
left to matter is bare objectivity, namely, that it is a form of
consciousness excited in a mind by some other mind, not occurring
spontaneously. This seems to me the only true connotation of matter.
Matter is not the antithesis of mind; it is a mere affection of mind.
The two are not in any proper sense co-ordinate or equipollent. They
are to each other somewhat in the relation of a mirror to an
image reflected from it. Mind is to each of us a concrete primary
experience--the feeling of personal power and identity. Matter is a
general idea arising from the comparison of objects in consciousness.
No two things could well be more diverse.
Since general ideas are products of our own mental energy, and matter
the most general of all, it is the farthest removed from the concrete
objective condition, and so it is literally true that we never
objectively perceive matter though we constantly perceive material
objects. It is as impossible to see, touch, or taste matter as it
is to ride the general idea _Equus_ or dine off the general idea
_nourishment_. In denying the objectivity of matter we do not deny the
objective reality of things: we merely decline to confound a general
idea with the objects that have contributed to form it. We decline to
be _mystics_, in the sense defined by J. S. Mill[10]. The belief in
the external existence of matter is a form of mysticism; the Hindus
call it _maya_, meaning illusion.
Some metaphysicians argue that since phenomena appear only in
conjunction, we are compelled by the constitution of our nature
to think of them conjoined in and by something, and this imaginary
foundation and cement is another meaning of the word 'matter.'
For myself I feel no such compulsion. When things are complex I
recollect the several properties as cohering together, and when I
abstract one or some for special consideration, I sometimes think of
the others as forming a 'substance' in which the abstracted properties
inhere. But I cannot discover any inherence or coherence except the
mutual, and the notion of an invisible material setting which
holds all the parts of a thing together seems to me superfluous
and unwarranted. If it existed it would not be, as logicians argue,
something superior and antithetical to phenomena; it would be simply
an inferred or latent phenomenon like the luminiferous ether of
science. The material substance is evidently a groping of the mind
after the noumenal (mental) substance which causes the appearance of
objects.