THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE. Thomas Troward
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source derived, the
determination to think honestly for ourselves instead of endeavouring to
get our thinking done for us. Let us then commence by enquiring what we
really mean by the livingness which we attribute to spirit and the deadness
which we attribute to matter.
At first we may be disposed to say that livingness consists in the power of
motion and deadness in its absence; but a little enquiry into the most
recent researches of science will soon show us that this distinction does
not go deep enough. It is now one of the fully-established facts of
physical science that no atom of what we call "dead matter" is without
motion. On the table before me lies a solid lump of steel, but in the light
of up-to-date science I know that the atoms of that seemingly inert mass
are vibrating with the most intense energy, continually dashing hither and
thither, impinging upon and rebounding from one another, or circling round
like miniature solar systems, with a ceaseless rapidity whose complex
activity is enough to bewilder the imagination. The mass, as a mass, may
lie inert upon the table; but so far from being destitute of the element of
motion it is the abode of the never-tiring energy moving the particles with
a swiftness to which the speed of an express train is as nothing. It is,
therefore, not the mere fact of motion that is at the root of the
distinction which we draw instinctively between spirit and matter; we must
go deeper than that. The solution of the problem will never be found by
comparing Life with what we call deadness, and the reason for this will
become apparent later on; but the true key is to be found by comparing one
degree of livingness with another. There is, of course, one sense in which
the quality of livingness does not admit of degrees; but there is another
sense in which it is entirely a question of degree. We have no doubt as to
the livingness of a plant, but we realize that it is something very
different from the livingness of an animal. Again, what average boy would
not prefer a fox-terrier to a goldfish for a pet? Or, again, why is it that
the boy himself is an advance upon the dog? The plant, the fish, the dog,
and the boy are all equally _alive_; but there is a difference in the
quality of their livingness about which no one can have any doubt, and no
one would hesitate to say that this difference is in the degree of
intelligence. In whatever way we turn the subject we shall always find that
what we call the "livingness" of any individual life is ultimately measured
by its intelligence. It is the possession of greater intelligence that
places the animal higher in the scale of being than the plant, the man
higher than the animal, the intellectual man higher than the savage. The
increased intelligence calls into activity modes of motion of a higher
order corresponding to itself. The higher the intelligence, the more
completely the mode of motion is under its control: and as we descend in
the scale of intelligence, the descent is marked by a corresponding
increase in _automatic_ motion not subject to the control of a
self-conscious intelligence. This descent is gradual from the expanded
self-recognition of the highest human personality to that lowest order of
visible forms which we speak of as "things," and from which
self-recognition is entirely absent.
We see, then, that the livingness of Life consists in intelligence--in
other words, in the power of Thought; and we may therefore say that the
distinctive quality of spirit is Thought, and, as the opposite to this, we
may say that the distinctive quality of matter is Form. We cannot conceive
of matter without form. Some form there must be, even though invisible to
the physical eye; for matter, to be matter at all, must occupy space, and
to occupy any particular space necessarily implies a corresponding form.
For these reasons we may lay it down as a fundamental proposition that the
distinctive quality of spirit is Thought and the distinctive quality of
matter is Form. This is a radical distinction from which important
consequences follow, and should, therefore, be carefully noted by the
student.
Form implies extension in space and also limitation within certain
boundaries. Thought implies neither. When, therefore, we think of Life as
existing in any particular _form_ we associate it with the idea of
extension in space, so that an elephant may be said to consist of a vastly
larger amount of living substance than a mouse. But if we think of Life as
the fact of livingness we do not associate it with any idea of extension,
and we at once realize that the mouse is quite as much alive as the
elephant, notwithstanding the difference in size. The important point of
this distinction is that if we can conceive of anything as entirely devoid
of the element of extension in space, it must be present in its entire
totality anywhere and everywhere--that is to say, at every point of space
simultaneously. The scientific definition of time is that it is the period
occupied by a body in passing from one given point in space to another,
and, therefore, according to this definition, when there is no space there
can be no time; and hence that conception of spirit which realizes it as
devoid of the element of space must realize it as being devoid of the
element of time also; and we therefore find that the conception of spirit
as pure Thought, and not as concrete Form, is the conception of it as
subsisting perfectly independently of the elements of time and space. From
this it follows that if the idea of anything is conceived as existing on
this level it can only represent that thing as being actually present here
and now. In this view of things nothing can be remote from us either in
time or space: either the idea is entirely dissipated or it exists as an
actual present entity, and not as something that _shall_ be in the future,
for where there is no sequence in time there can be no future. Similarly
where there is no