Part 3

4. Having shown that an immaterial substance can have no existence, because it has no relation to space, we shall next show that it can have no existence, because it has no relation to duration. Isaac Taylor says, "that which is wholly abstracted from matter, and in speaking of which we deny that it has any property in common therewith, _can in itself be subjected to none of its_ CONDITIONS." One of the _conditions_ absolutely essential to the existence of matter is duration or time. (See definition 5.) That which is not subjected to the condition of duration, must be subjected to the condition of an instant, which is the negative of duration; but nothing is also the negative of duration and of substance; (see definition 4 and 6;) therefore that which has no duration is _nothing,_ and cannot be a substance; hence an immaterial substance cannot exist.

There are many truths which may be called FIRST TRUTHS, or self-evident truths, which cannot be demonstrated, because there are no truths of a simpler nature that can be adduced to establish them. Such truths are the foundation of all reasoning. They must be admitted without demonstration, because they are self-evident. That space and duration are essential conditions to the existence of all substance, may be denominated a self-evident truth; if so, it is useless to undertake to prove it. And in this case, the foregoing need not be considered as a demonstration, but merely different forms of expression representing the same self-evident truth.

IMMATERIALISTS ARE ATHEISTS.

There are two classes of Atheists in the world. One class denies the existence of God in the most positive language: the other denies his existence in duration or space. One says, "There is no God;" the other says, "God is not _here_ or _there,_ any more than he exists now and _then_." (Isaac Taylor's Physical Theory of Another Life Chap. II.) The infidel says, God does not exist anywhere. The Immaterialist says, "He exists _Nowhere_." (Good's Book of Nature.) The infidel says, There is no such substance as God. The Immaterialist says, There is such a substance as God, but it is "_without Parts_." (First of the Thirty Nine Articles; also I Art. Methodist Discipline.) The Atheist says, There is no such substance as _Spirit._ The Immaterialist says, "A Spirit, though he lives and acts, occupies no room, and fills no space, in the same way and after the same manner as matter, not even so much as does the minutest grain of sand." (Rev. David James on the Trinity, in Unitarianism Confuted. Lec. VII., page 382.) The Atheist does not seek to hide his infidelity: but the Immaterialist, whose declared belief amounts to the same thing as the Atheist's endeavours to hide his infidelity under the shallow covering of a few words.

The "thinking principle," says Dr. Thomas Brown, "is essentially one, not extended and divisible, but incapable by its very nature, of any subdivision into integral parts." (Brown's "Philosophy of the Human Mind." Lec. XCVII.) What is this but the rankest kind of infidelity couched in a blind, plausible form. That which is "not extended and not divisible" and "without parts," cannot be anything else than nothing. Take away these qualities and conditions, and no power of language can give us the least idea of existence. The very idea conveyed by the term existence is something extended, divisible, and with parts. Take these away, and you take away existence itself. It cannot be so much as the negative of space, or, what is generally called, an indivisible point, for that has a relation to the surrounding spaces. It cannot be so much as the negative of duration, or, what is generally called, an indivisible instant, for that has a relation to the past and future. Therefore, it must be the negative of all existence, or what is called absolutely NOTHING. Nothing, and nothing only, is a representative of that which has no relation to space or time--that is, unextended, indivisible, and without parts. Therefore, the immaterialist is a religious Atheist; he only differs from the other classes of Atheists, by clothing an indivisible unextended NOTHING with the powers of a god. One class believes in no God; the other class believes that NOTHING is god, and worships it as such. There is no twisting away from this. The most profound philosopher in all the ranks of modern Christianity, cannot extricate the Immaterialists from atheism. He cannot show the least difference between the idea represented by the word _nothing_, and the idea represented by that which is unextended, indivisible, and without parts, having no relation to space or time. All the philosophers of the universe could not give a better or more correct definition of _Nothing._ And yet this is the god worshipped by the Church of England--the Methodists--and millions of other atheistical idolaters, according to their own definitions, as recorded in their respective articles of faith. An open Atheist is not so dangerous as the Atheist who couches his atheistical doctrines under the head of "ARTICLES OF RELIGION." The first stands out with open colours and boldly avows his infidelity; the latter, under the sacred garb of religion, draws into his yawning vortex, the unhappy millions who are persuaded to believe in, and worship an unextended indivisible _nothing_ without parts, deified into a god. A pious Atheist is much more serviceable in building up the kingdom of darkness than one who openly, and without any deception, avows his infidelity.

No wonder that this modern god has wrought no miracles and given no revelations since his followers invented their "Articles of Religion." A being without parts must be entirely powerless, and can perform no miracles. Nothing can be communicated from such a being; for, if nothing give nothing, nothing will be received. If, at death, his followers are to be made like him, they will enjoy, with some of the modern Pagans, all the beauties of annihilation. To be made like him! Admirable thought! How transcendently sublime to behold an innumerable multitude of unextended nothings, casting their crowns at the feet of the great, unextended, infinite Nothing, filling all space, and yet "without parts!" There will be no danger of quarrelling for want of room; for the Rev. David James says, "Ten thousand spirits might be brought together into the smallest compass imaginable, and there exist without any inconvenience for want of room. As materiality," continues he, "forms no property of a spirit, the space which is sufficient for one, must be amply sufficient for myriads, yea, for all that exist." (Rev. David James on the Trinity, in Unitarianism Confuted. Lec. VII., page 382.) According to this, all the spirits that exist, "could be brought together into the smallest compass imaginable," or, in other words into no compass at all; for, he says, a spirit occupies "no room, and fills no space." What an admirable description of Nothing! _Nothing_ "occupies no room, and fills no space!" If myriads of Nothings were "brought together into the smallest compass imaginable," they would "there exist without any inconvenience for want of room." Everything which the Immaterialist says, of the existence of _Spirit,_ will apply without any variation, to the existence of _Nothing._ If he says that his god cannot exist "Here" or "There," the same is true of _Nothing._ If he affirms that he cannot exist "Now" and "Then," the same can, in all truth, be affirmed of _Nothing._ If he declares, that he is "unextended," so is _Nothing._ If he asserts that he is "indivisible" and "without parts," so is _Nothing._ If he declares that a spirit "occupies no room and fills no space," neither does _Nothing._ If he says a spirit is "Nowhere," so is _Nothing._ All that he affirms of the one, can, in like manner, and, with equal truth, be affirmed of the other. Indeed, they are only two words, each of which express precisely the same idea. There is no more absurdity in calling _Nothing_ a substance, and clothing it with Almighty powers, than there is in making a substance out of that which is precisely like nothing, and imagining it to have Almighty powers. Therefore, an immaterial god is a deified Nothing, and all his worshippers are atheistical idolators.

A SPIRITUAL SUBSTANCE IS MATERIAL.

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.