Matter and Mind
i
People say we can conceive the existence of matter and the existence
of mind. I doubt it. I doubt how far we have any definite
conception of mind or of matter, pure and simple.
What is meant by conceiving a thing or understanding it? When we
hear of a piece of matter instinct with mind, as protoplasm, for
example, there certainly comes up before our closed eyes an idea, a
picture which we imagine to bear some resemblance to the thing we are
hearing of. But when we try to think of matter apart from every
attribute of matter (and this I suspect comes ultimately to "apart
from every attribute of mind") we get no image before our closed
eyes--we realise nothing to ourselves. Perhaps we surreptitiously
introduce some little attribute, and then we think we have conceived
of matter pure and simple, but this I think is as far as we can go.
The like holds good for mind: we must smuggle in a little matter
before we get any definite idea at all.
ii
Matter and mind are as heat and cold, as life and death, certainty
and uncertainty, union and separateness. There is no absolute heat,
life, certainty, union, nor is there any absolute cold, death,
uncertainty or separateness.
We can conceive of no ultimate limit beyond which a thing cannot
become either hotter or colder, there is no limit; there are degrees
of heat and cold, but there is no heat so great that we cannot fancy
its becoming a little hotter, that is we cannot fancy its not having
still a few degrees of cold in it which can be extracted.
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