Cordially as we hate coining new words, we still more cordially hate the German fashion of hooking together two vernacular words and calling the junction an addition to the language. But we are compelled, in order to save circumlocution, to coin a word to express those facts which spring from Mind, whether, as in moral philosophy, purely metaphysical, or as in natural philosophy, generated by Mind from Matter, by Reason from Experience. Such facts we would beg to call noögenisms (νοος, mens, cogitatio, and γενος, natus, progenies); therein including all mental offsprings or deductions, whether called hypotheses, theories, systems, sciences, axioms, aphorisms, &c.
Noögenisms, therefore, are those facts which mind generates from other facts without annihilating the latter; hence it is said that, metaphysically, two and two make five. Thus, mind, contemplating the physical facts of the super-position of strata, deduces from and adds to them this metaphysical fact or noögenism;—Strata were deposited successively.
Herein appears too an essential difference between Mind and Matter. If diverse substances, having a natural affinity, be amalgamated, a new substance is obtained, but the elements are lost. Of hydrogen and oxygen water may be made, but the gases are forthwith lost in the fluid; the procedure may be reversed and the water be converted into gases, but the water has disappeared. This is not so with mind and noögenisms; for however closely, by a mental synthesis, divers facts may be united into a new fact or noögenism, the latter is obtained without losing the former or elementary facts, which remain as Knowledge, elements of Wisdom, to support the noögenism or create others.
We see then, that while Mind is crescive, Matter is not. Matter is neither crescive nor decrescive. It may be changed into divers forms, animal, vegetable, or mineral, but it never can be varied in quantity. The six feet of animated clay dies, it rots in the silent tomb; years pass by. The hand of affection which protected the loathsome, yet—for the once animating spirit’s sake—beloved, remains is cold and rotted too. The sepulchre, so long forgotten and deserted, again becomes of interest to the brother of the hyæna and the resurrectionist—the antiquarian. He, in his cool, business-like phraseology, opens a barrow or exhumes a tomb, and finds—what? A pound of dust! The sole visible remains of a gigantic hero or a stalwart king. Yet is not one particle of that ancient demigod perished. Every atom is, in some shape or other, in the universe. Some atoms may “have gone a passage through the guts of a beggar,” and so have nurtured an other human form; some may have stopped a beer-barrel and so
“Imperious Cæsar dead, and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”
The theory of the metempsychosis is true of matter; and as the ancient sages believed the soul to be material, that theory, so far from being violently absurd (as we in the pride of better knowledge are apt to term it), was almost the only theory which the thinking and observant mind could of itself elaborate. Hence the adoption of that system by far-distant nations is no proof of inter-communication. What the Brahmin in India found a natural result of the doctrine of the materiality of the soul and its consequent analogy to everything else material, the Druid in Britain would arrive at with equal ease.
But Mind is both crescive and decrescive; and it is another peculiar property of Mind, that it is never stationary,—it is always changing, increasing or decreasing. This is an important consideration; a fearful responsibility cast upon it. If the one talent (and God has so benignly ordered it, that no sane, and therefore responsible, mind is devoid of at least one talent,) is hid in a napkin, the servant is condemned and his talent taken from him. But if the talent is put out to use, it will increase and grow, and make other talents, and the lord of that servant will receive his own again with usury. For, having endowed man with this crescive power, He justly demands that power to be exercised and the mind to be enlarged and expanded “by every one according to his several ability,” so that He may reap the harvest which his well-rewarded servants have gathered in, “reaping where He hath not sown, and gathering where He hath not strewed.”
The very cause of this crescive power of mind is, that the sum of the units aggregated by mind is greater than the arithmetical sum of the units; and the cause of this is, that facts, the elements of noögenisms, are not, like chemical elements, lost in the fact compounded from them, but retain likewise a separate, independent existence, capable of being again compounded into other noögenisms, and still ever without losing their original forms.
It will now be understood what is meant by two and two making five, &c.; and until a man is incontrovertibly convinced of the possibility of this he will in vain multiply facts. Facts must be added together, not for their arithmetical product, which is Knowledge, but for their metaphysical product, which is Wisdom. You will frequently hear asked by utilitarians, what is the use (cui bono?) of such and such Knowledge? Remember that the use of all Knowledge is to feed the mind and to generate Wisdom, and you will always have this ready and sufficient reply, “It is food for thought.”