III.] Is he not Matter? 123 fear, unanswerable question-What is matter? another equally perplexing and perhaps unanswerable question lies, viz.-Is there such a thing as matter? In the meantime we may use the word in the usual sense. I have a matter body, have I? and yet this matter body changes continually. According to what the scientists tell me, this is not the body I had ten years ago; not a particle of that body is left in me; the whole of what I now have is as new as any resurrection body could be. And yet my consciousness remains an unbroken unit. Growing, of course, but not by means of matter but by exercise of mind; using body as necessary complement and servant, but not wholly dependent on bodily changes,-often wholly independent. Where is that old body? or where are those old bodies? for I have had several. Gone, for they were dissipated (not figuratively let us hope), changed into other forms, they tell us. Let us try to get some of the matter of the old body and see what it is. We are told that the body is largely made up of water, and now as we cannot be sure of the water of the old body we may take any water in any form as a specimen. Common sense would perhaps take a handful of that snow now lying in heaps in your streets1 as a tangible illustration, and pressing it into an ice-ball, throw it at my head by way of giving a striking proof of the existence of matter at least, before entering upon the study of its nature. Isn't that a sufficient proof that matter exists? says he. No, I reply; I have evidence of forces, of your will-force that pressed the ball and threw the ice: of force in the ice, and force in my head, and that is all I can yet grant you. But let us examine your specimen of matter, your ice-ball. Why, how is this? It is changing its form: hand me a vessel 1At the time of the delivery of this lecture an unusual quantity of snow had fallen and almost blocked up the streets of Tokio, 124 What is Matter? [LECT. or it will be gone. And now in the vessel, as we test it and expose it to heat or to sunlight it vanishes completely, and we cannot recover it. Certain forces changed or let go, and the material ice-ball has become to our unaided powers as nothing. Let us try something else,-a bone, a sinew: those of any animal will do, for they are materially the same as those of the human frame. We search them also with other tests in the laboratory and the very same result occurs. We liberate the matter from certain forces, and it eludes us. Well, says common sense, snow is real snow, a table is a real table, and a bone is a real bone, whatever becomes of them. Very true; we may hold to that and not go far wrong. But if there is any matter in the bone, or snow or table, I want to have that matter produced, and to learn what it really is. Let apply to the Materialist, that thorough-going believer in matter, and ask him to define it so that we shall know when we find it. He tells us, that is easy enough.-Matter is any thing you can touch, weigh; any thing that has length, breadth, or thickness; it is more or less hard, solid, liquid or gaseous; it cannot move unless it is moved by some force; it cannot stop unless it is stopped by some force; it has cohesion and-But what is cohesion? Why, a force which holds it together. But I want to find what it holds together. I find everywhere forces in abundance; but what does this cohesion-force hold together, for that I presume will be matter? You take away the cohesion of any particular substance and you have the smallest possible speck of the same substance, that you can hardly catch a glimpse of with the most powerful microscope, but it retains all the properties of the body. It is a molecule, and molecules combined by forces make the substance you handle. But what about the molecules,-have they any cohesion, or force in them holding them together? Oh yes, they are made up of atoms. The molecule dissolved, the substance changes, it goes back into III.] Is there any Matter? 125 a more primary elemental form. But what about the atoms? Can they be seen? No. Can they be touched, weighed, measured? Not by any power of man. Are they round or square, hard or soft? No one can tell; many guesses have been made. Chemistry proposes one explanation, and physics another, but it is all a process of metaphysics,-pure reasoning. Have the atoms any of the properties of matter? We can tell of none. Are they matter? or is that from which they sprang, matter? No one can tell scientifically, assuredly. Where then is your matter? Herbert Spencer tells us that matter in itself is a phase of the absolute, inconceivable, unknowable fundamental reality, but according to the laws of the relativity of knowledge we may assume the existence of matter until it is verified. Or in plainer words, we know nothing about matter, but phenomena; but we must pretend that we do in hopes that some day its real existence will be verified-and even if it is not ever verified it makes no great difference any way. That may do very well for an assumption philosophy, but it does not help us much in our search for the truth. The fact of the matter is, we are no nearer an understanding of what matter is than men were 2,000 years ago. We look everywhere-even when we grow metaphysical with Tyndall and "prolong our gaze across the boundary," though helped by all the aids that science can give-and yet we fail to find any absolute proof of the existence of matter, let alone that vaunted matter which should have "the promise and potency" of all phenomena. Science has chased matter back and back in unbroken unity, reducing variety into simplicity, turning materiality into immateriality, and is forced to assume the existence of atoms and of ether, the proof of which is nothing more nor less than that they are thought to be necessary to account for certain phenomena. And now granting the existence of atoms and ether. We can 126 Matter gives proof of Mind. [LECT. easily conceive of the process being carried on a step further, when all of the forces are withdrawn from what men call matter, and it not only becomes apparently immaterial, but it vanishes from thought-it can not exist so far as we know apart from forces. On the other hand I can conceive of forces existing apart from matter, existing potentially in the Infinite Mind, in which lay also the design of the Universal All. We know the power of mind in our limited microcosm; we can comprehend the mystery of the wider macrocsm only by postulating the existence of Creative Mind. This postulate may be as little capable of proof as the postulates of geometry, and yet be as immovable as they as a foundation for true logical thought. If there is such a thing as matter, it has a certain volume. The amount is fixed; matter is indestructible they say. Who or what fixed the amount? Matter could not determine it. If the amount changes, then there is creation. Who creates ? who destroys? Matter cannot do it. If matter and force are united in just such exact proportion as to produce just such a universe, who united them? and who controls them? They cannot control or determine themselves. To call it a "fortuitous concatenation of circumstances" does not throw any light on the subject. And Mr. Spencer's homogeneity differentiating into heterogeneity, with aggregations and segregations, and polarities, etc., make the darkness of the problem only more visible, without leading us a step nearer the solution. All these attempted materialistic or agnostic solutions reduce themselves ultimately to pure chance. The universe as it is, accidentally came into being out of the chaos of matter and forces. As for instance when we put paper and ink, and type and presses, and cloth and thread, etc., into one chaotic 1See Bishop of Carlisle's "Fallacies of Materialism," Nineteenth Century, Dec. 1882. III.] Mind links Man to his Creator. 127 mass in an immense barrel and churn and churn the same, until at one time out comes a perfect volume of Mr. Spencer's "First Principles," and at another a complete edition of the Bible; the difference to be accounted for by saying "fortuitous concatenation of circumstances"-by mere chance! Our minds tell us that that is not the way things work to-day, and the same mind strongly insists upon it that things never and nowhere acted in that way. We know that our minds regulate our actions, and are the first cause of a great many phenomena. In fact mind is the only first cause we know. And there is no reason why we should not postulate Infinite Mind as the First Cause of all things. And now if one mind can study and appreciate, even partially, the productions of another mind, we may consider it as evident that the two minds are, in essential constitution, alike. If the young student grapples with the mighty productions of master minds, the creations of poetic genius, or the deep reasonings of the philosopher, or the profound generalizations of the scientist, though he stumbles often, is in darkness often, yet he rises until he sees with the eyes of his masters and thinks their thoughts over again. He is of the same nature as they. And so when we trace the mighty lessons of mind in the universal Book of God, though oft we stumble and often make mistakes, yet patiently toiling on, we can trace and truly know the thought and plan of the great author, in a measure trace intelligently the workings of that Divine Intelligence "in whom we live and move and have our being." And by a parity of reasoning, we conclude that the mind of the student is akin to that of the author. In a word we find that man is not only mind, but the human mind is akin to the divine-and instead of being agitated matter, MAN IS MADE IN THE LIKENESS OF GOD. III. The next interesting point which asks for explanation is |