V. Our fifth proposition is, That it is impossible to account for the phenomena of thought, feeling, desire, volition, and self-consciousness, by ascribing them, as Materialists do, either to the substance of "matter," or to its form; that is, either to the atomic particles of which it consists, or to the peculiar organization in which these particles are arranged.
It is too manifest to admit either of doubt or denial, that the power of thinking, feeling, and willing, does not belong to every form of matter. It is not, therefore, one of its essential properties; and if it belong to it at all, it must be either a quality superadded to the ordinary powers of matter, or a product resulting from its configuration in an organized form.
If it be a quality superadded merely to the ordinary powers of matter, then it must exist equally in every part of the mass to which it is attached; every particle of the matter in which it inheres must be sentient, intelligent, voluntary, and active; and, on this supposition, it will remain a difficult, if not desperate problem, to account for the unity of consciousness by such a diversity of parts, and especially for the continuity of consciousness, when the material elements are confessedly in a state of constant flux and mutation. It would seem, too, that if thought be thus connected with an extended, divisible, and mutable substance, it must be itself extended, and, of course, divisible; and, accordingly, Dr. Priestley does not hesitate to affirm that our ideas, as well as our minds, possess these characters. "Whatever ideas," he says, "are in themselves, they are evidently produced by external objects, and must therefore correspond to them; and since many of the objects or archetypes of ideas are divisible, it necessarily follows that the ideas themselves are divisible also." ... "If the archetypes of ideas have extension, the ideas which are expressive of them, and are actually produced by them according to certain mechanical laws, must have extension likewise; and, therefore, the mind in which they exist, whether it be material or immaterial, must have extension also.... I am, therefore, obliged to conclude that the sentient principle in man, containing ideas which certainly have parts, and are divisible, and consequently must have extension, cannot be that simple, indivisible, and immaterial substance that some have imagined it to be, but something that has real extension, and therefore may have the other properties of matter."[169] He argues that ideas must be extended and divisible because their objects or archetypes are so; and, further, that the mind itself must be material, because these properties belong to the ideas which inhere in it as their subject or seat. Now, this argument is fairly met by the reasoning, or the ridicule, call it which you will, of Dr. Thomas Brown: "In saying of mind that it is matter, we must mean, if we mean anything, that the principle which thinks is hard and divisible; and that it will be not more absurd to talk of the twentieth part of an affirmation, or the quarter of a hope, of the top of a remembrance, and the north and east corners of a comparison, than of the twentieth part of a pound, or of the different points of the compass, in reference to any part of the globe. The true answer to the statement of the Materialist,—the answer which we feel in our hearts, on the very expression of the plurality and divisibility of feeling,—is that it assumes what, far from admitting, we cannot even understand, and that, with every effort of attention which we can give to our mental analysis, we are as incapable of forming any conception of what is meant by the quarter of a doubt, or the half of a belief, as of forming to ourselves an image of a circle without a central point, or of a square without a single angle."[170]
But the theory which supposes the soul to be extended and divisible, and its ideas, feelings, and volitions to be extended and divisible also, has given place to another, which does not represent the mental qualities as inhering in every particle of the matter with which they are associated, but rather as the products of organization, the results, not of the atomic elements, but of the form, or figure, into which they are cast. It seems to have been felt that it would be unsafe to ascribe the power of thinking to every particle of the brain, and it is now represented as the result or product of "the brain in action, as light and heat are of fire, and fragrance of the flower."[171] This idea is illustrated by a great variety of natural examples, in which certain effects are produced by the arrangement of matter, which could not be produced by its individual particles, existing separate and apart, or combined in other forms. Nor is this a new phase of the theory, or an original discovery of the present age; it was familiarly known and fully discussed[172] in the days of Clarke and Collins, and every similitude which is now employed to illustrate it may be found dissected in their writings. Collins had undertaken to prove that "an individual power may reside in a material system which consists of separate and distinct parts,"—"an individual power which is not in every one, nor in any one, of the particles that compose it, when taken apart and considered singly:" and he had adduced as an example the very similitude which Atkinson employs, namely, "fragrance from the flower;" for he adds, "a rose, for example, consists of several particles, which, separately and singly, want a power to produce that agreeable sensation we experience in them when united." Other instances are given; such as "the power of the eye to contribute to the act of seeing, the power of a clock to show the hour of the day, the power of a musical instrument to produce in us harmonious sounds;" these, he says, "are powers not at all resulting from any powers of the same kind inhering in the parts of the system;" and he infers that "in the same manner the power of thinking, without being an aggregate of powers of the same kind, may yet inhere in a system of matter." But these examples, so far from confirming, serve rather to confute, the theory in whose support they are adduced. Could it be shown, indeed, that the eye possesses in itself the power of vision, and that sight results solely from its peculiar texture; or, that a clock is really an "intellectual machine," and produces an "intellectual effect;" or, that a musical instrument possesses in itself the soul of melody, and is conscious of its own sweet sounds,—then it might be possible to entertain the supposition that, in like manner, an organized brain may have the power of producing thought, and feeling, and will. But what is the matter of fact? Let Dr. Clarke's answer with reference to the case of a timepiece suffice for all: "That which you call the power of a clock to show the time of the day is evidently nothing in the clock itself, but the figure and motion of its parts, and, consequently, not anything of a different sort or kind from the powers inherent in the parts. Whereas 'thinking,' if it was the result of the powers of the different parts of the machine of the body, or of the brain in particular, would be something really inhering in the machine itself, specifically different from all and every one of the powers of the several parts out of which it resulted; which is an express contradiction, a supposing the effect to have more in it than the cause." ... "That particular and determinate degree of velocity in a wheel, whereby it turns once round precisely in twelve hours, is that which you call the power of a clock to show the time of the day; and because such a determinate velocity of motion is made use of by us for the measure of time, is it therefore really a new quality or power distinct from the motion itself?" The same answer is equally applicable to all the other examples, and it may be stated generally as amounting to this, that "it is absolutely false in fact, and impossible in the nature of things, that any power whatsoever should inhere or reside in any system or composition of matter, different from the powers residing in the single parts."[173]
The two great difficulties which adhere to the theory of Materialism, and which must ever prove insurmountable, are these: first, to account for the power of thinking by means of material atoms, which are individually destitute of it; and secondly, to account for the unity and continuity of human consciousness by means of material atoms which are constantly undergoing flux and mutation. For the first end, recourse has been had to the theory which ascribes the power of thinking, not to the particles of matter, but to their order, arrangement, or organization; and for the second, the continuous sense of personal identity is supposed to be sufficiently accounted for by supposing that, as the particles which compose the brain are changed, the retiring atoms leave their share of the general consciousness as a legacy to their successors. And both these expedients for surmounting the difficulty are exquisitely caricatured in the "Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus," in a chapter which is justly described as "an inimitable ridicule on Collins' argument against Clarke, to prove the soul only a quality." The Society of Freethinkers, addressing Martinus, propose to send him an answer to the ill-grounded sophisms of their opponents, and likewise "an easy mechanical explanation of perception or thinking."—"One of their chief arguments," say they, "is that self-consciousness cannot inhere in any system of matter, because all matter is made up of several distinct beings which never can make up one individual thinking being. This is easily answered by a familiar instance. In every jack there is a meat-roasting quality, which neither resides in the fly, nor in the weight, nor in any particular wheel, of the jack, but is the result of the whole composition.... And as the general quality of meat-roasting, with its several modifications, does not inhere in any one part of the jack, so neither does consciousness, with its several modes of sensation, intellection, volition, &c., inhere in any one, but is the result from the mechanical composition of the whole animal." And then, in regard to the second difficulty: "The parts," say they, "of an animal body are perpetually changed, ... from whence it will follow that the idea of individual consciousness must be constantly translated from one particle of matter to another.... We answer, this is only a fallacy of the imagination. They make a great noise about this individuality, how a man is conscious to himself that he is the same individual he was twenty years ago, notwithstanding the flux state of the particles of matter that compose his body. We think this is capable of a very plain answer, and may be easily illustrated by a familiar example. Sir John Cutler had a pair of black worsted stockings, which his maid darned so often with silk, that they became at last a pair of silk stockings. Now, supposing those stockings of Sir John's endued with some degree of consciousness at every particular darning, they would have been sensible that they were the same individual pair of stockings, both before and after the darning!"
The subject is here presented in a ludicrous point of view, and some may doubt whether this is a legitimate method of treating it. But it should not be forgotten that while ridicule is no safe test of truth, it may be the most effective exposure of nonsense and folly.
SECTION III.
THE RELATIONS OF MATERIALISM TO THEOLOGY.
It has been generally felt and acknowledged, that the doctrine which preserves the distinction between matter and spirit, body and soul, is more in accordance with the truths of Natural and Revealed Religion, than the opposite theory which identifies them; and that, on the other hand, a profound and serious study of these truths has a tendency to raise our thoughts above the low level of Materialism, and to direct them to the contemplation of a higher and nobler world,—the world of spirits.
There are many distinct points at which the theory of Materialism comes into contact and collision with the truths both of Natural and Revealed Religion. By a brief enumeration of these, the practical importance of the subject may be clearly evinced.