A New Era of Thought

by Charles Howard Hinton

But much depends on what kind of material relations we perceive outside us. A human being, an animal and a machine are to the mind all merely portions of matter arranged in certain ways. But the mind can give an exhaustive account of the machine, account fairly well for the animal, while the human being it only defines externally, leaving the real knowledge to be supplied by other faculties.

But we must not under-estimate the work of the mind, for it is only by the observation of and thought about the bodies with which we come into contact that we know human beings. It is the faculty of thought that puts us in a position to recognize a soul.

And so, too, about the universe—it is only by correct thought about it that we can perceive its true moral nature.

And it will be found that the deadness which we ascribe to the external world is not really there, but is put in by us because of our own limitations. It is really the self elements in our knowledge which make us talk of mechanical necessity, dead matter. When our limitations fall, we behold the spirit of the world like we behold the spirit of a friend—something which is discerned in and through the material presentation of a body to us.

Our thought means are sufficient at present to show us human souls; but all except human beings is, as far as science is concerned, inanimate. One self element must be got rid of from our perception, and this will be changed.

The one thing necessary is, that in matters of thinking we will not admit anything that is not perfectly clear, palpable and evident. On the mind the only conceivable demand is to seek for facts. The rock on which so many systems of philosophy have come to grief is the attempt to put moral principles into nature. Our only duty is to accept what we find. Man is no more the centre of the moral world than he is of the physical world. Then relegate the intellect to its right position of dealing with facts of arrangement—it can appreciate structure—and let it simply look on the world and report on it. We have to choose between metaphysics and space thought. In metaphysics we find lofty ideals—principles enthroned high in our souls, but which reduce the world to a phantom, and ourselves to the lofty spectators of an arid solitude. On the other hand, if we follow Kant’s advice, we use our means and find realities linked together, and in the physical interplay of forces and connexion of structure we behold the relations between spirits—those dwelling in man and those above him.

It is difficult to explain this next self element that has to be removed from the block of cubes; it requires a little careful preparation, in fact our language hardly affords us the means. But it is possible to approach indirectly, and to detect the self-element by means of an analogy.

If we suspect there be some condition affecting ourselves which make us perceive things not as they are, but falsely, then it is possible to test the matter by making the supposition of other beings subject to certain conditions, and then examining what the effect on their experience would be of these conditions.

Thus if we make up the appearances which would present themselves to a being subject to a limitation or condition, we shall find that this limitation or condition, when unrecognized by him, presents itself as a general law of his outward world, or as properties and qualities of the objects external to him. He will, moreover, find certain operations possible, others impossible, and the boundary line between the possible and impossible will depend quite as much on the conditions under which he is as on the nature of the operations.

And if we find that in our experience of the outward world there are analogous properties and qualities of matter, analogous possibilities and impossibilities, then it will show to us that we in our turn are under analogous limitations, and that what we perceive as the external world is both the external world and our own conditions. And the task before us will be to separate the two. Now the problem we take up here is this—to separate the self elements from the true fact. To separate them not merely as an outward theory and intelligent apprehension, but to separate them in the consciousness itself, so that our power of perception is raised to a higher level. We find out that we are under limitations. Our next step is to so familiarize ourselves with the real aspect of things, that we perceive like beings not under our limitations. Or more truly, we find that inward soul which itself not subject to these limitations, is awakened to its own natural action, when the verdicts conveyed to it through the senses are purged of the self elements introduced by the senses.