By the light of his sputtering candle that night Josè sat with elbows propped on the table, his head clasped in his hands, and a sketch of the human eye before him. In his confident attempt to explain to Carmen the process of cognition he had been completely baffled. Certainly, light coming from an object enters the eye and casts a picture upon the retina. He had often seen the photographic camera exhibit the same phenomenon. The law of the impenetrability of matter had to be set aside, of course––or else light must be pure vibration, without a material vibrating concomitant. Then, too, it was plain that the light in some way communicated its vibration to the little projecting ends of the optic nerve, which lie spread out over the rear inner surface of the eye. And equally patent that this vibration is in some way taken up by the optic nerve and transmitted to the center of sight in the brain. But after that––what? He laughed again at Carmen’s pertinent question about the mind climbing up into the brain to see the vibrating nerve. But was it so silly a presumption, after all? Is the mind within the brain, awaiting in Stygian darkness the advent of the vibrations which shall give it pictures of the outside world? Or is the mind outside of the brain, but still slavishly forced to look at these vibrations of the optic nerve and then translate them into terms of things without? What could a vibrating nerve suggest to a well-ordered mind, anyway? He might as logically wave a piece of meat and expect thereby to see a world! He laughed aloud at the thought. Why does not the foolish mind leave the brain and look at the picture on the retina? Or why does it not throw off its shackles and look directly at the object to be cognized, instead of submitting to dependence upon so frail a thing as fleshly eyes and nerves?
As he mused and sketched, unmindful of the voracious mosquitoes or the blundering moths that momentarily threatened his light, it dawned slowly upon him that the mind’s awareness of material objects could not possibly depend upon the vibrations of pieces of nerve tissue, so minute as to be almost invisible to the unaided sight. Still more absurd did it appear to him that his own mind, of which he might justly boast tremendous powers, could be prostituted to such a degree that its knowledge of things must be served to it on waving pieces of flesh.
And how about the other senses––touch, hearing? Did the ear hear, or the hand feel? He had always accepted the 71 general belief that man is dependent absolutely upon the five physical senses for his knowledge of an outside world. And now a little thought showed that from these five senses man could not possibly receive anything more than a series of disconnected vibrations! And, going a step further, anything that the mind infers from these vibrations is unquestionably inferred without a particle of outside authority!
He rose and paced the floor. A tremendous idea seemed to be knocking at the portal of his mentality.
What can the mind know? Assuredly nothing but the contents of itself. But the contents of mind are thoughts, ideas, mental things. Do solid material objects enter the mind? Certainly not! Then the mind knows not things, but its thoughts of things. And instead of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling solid material objects, the mind sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels––what? The contents of itself! Its own thoughts and ideas! And the outer world? Is only what the mind believes it to be. But surely his mind saw an outer world through the medium of his eye! No. His mind saw only its own concepts of an outer world––and these concepts, being mental, might take on whatever hue and tinge his mind decreed. In other words, instead of seeing a world of matter, he was seeing only a mental picture of a world. And that picture was in his own mind, and formed by that mind!
The man seized his hat and hurried out into the night. He walked rapidly the full length of the town. His mind was wrestling with stupendous thoughts.
An hour later he returned to his house, and seizing a pencil, wrote rapidly: Matter is mental. We do not see or feel matter, but we think it. It is formed and held as a mental concept in every human mind. The material universe is but the human mind’s concept of a universe, and can only be this mentality’s translation to itself of infinite Mind’s purely mental Creation.
“And so,” he commented aloud, sitting back and regarding his writing, “all my miserable life I have been seeing only my own thoughts! And I have let them use me and color my whole outlook!”
He extinguished the candle and threw himself, fully dressed, upon his bed.