Some idea of the processes of digestion can be given, especially the function of the stomach and the intestines; the liver may be too difficult, but the salivary glands are fairly simple, and so are the kidneys and the skin. The way the muscles act as an efficient mechanical engine, depending on the consumption of fuel and the conservation of energy, can be superficially explained, with some idea of the stimulating nervous system and controlling brain cells. The sensory nerves and specialised nerve-endings demand specific treatment.
These and other physiological details may seem out of place, but they are strictly appropriate; for the essence of Immanence is that nothing is common or unclean, until abused: and the nobler the faculty, the fouler is the degradation caused by its abuse. A sense of the responsibility involved in the possession or lease of all this intricate mass of mechanism, intrusted to our care, and the wish to keep it in good order—without giving unnecessary trouble to others to set it right, and without blaspheming the Maker by applying it to bad and ignoble ends—will arise almost imperceptibly, when the body is even begun to be understood. Many faults originate in ignorance and want of thought.
Mind and Matter
Among the material objects we move are the parts of our own bodies; indeed, it is through muscular intervention or agency that we act on bodies in general. We know of no other method. Even when we speak we are only moving certain face and throat and chest muscles, so as to generate condensations and rarefactions in the air; which, travelling by dynamical properties, excite corresponding vibrations or movements in the ear drum of our auditor;—vibrations not in themselves intelligible, but demanding interpretation from the recipient. So also it is with the traces of ink left on paper by our muscular action when we write. Only to a perceptive eye, and informed and kindred mind, have they any meaning.
It is probable that even when we think, some special atomic motion goes on in the brain cells, though this is an example of unconscious movement, of which there are many examples in bodily function; but directly we begin to attend to mental processes we leave the physical region as understood by us, and enter a more deeply mysterious psychical region. Unknown as this is for purposes of analysis, from the point of view of experience it is more immediately familiar than any other; since it is through the activity of mind that every other kind of existence is necessarily inferred. Thought is our mechanism or instrument of knowledge—through it we know everything—but thought is not what we directly know. Primarily we think of things, not of thought itself. So also sight is our instrument of seeing—through light we see—but it is not light that we perceive, rather it is the objects which send it in certain patterns to our eyes.
Whereas we can act on the external world only through our muscles; in ourselves we are aware of things belonging to a totally different category, with which muscle and movement and energy appear to have nothing to do,—such things as thought, purpose, desire, humour, affection, consciousness, will. These mental faculties seem intimately associated with, and are displayed by, our bodily mechanism; but in themselves they belong to a different order of being,—an order which employs and dominates the material, while immersed or immanent in it. Every purposed movement is preceded and inspired by thought.
Such reasoned control, by indwelling mind, may be undetectable and inconceivable to a low order of intelligence, being totally masked by the material garment; and the purpose underlying our activity may have to be inferred, by such intelligence, with as great difficulty as we feel in detecting indwelling Purpose amid the spontaneous operations of Nature.
Nevertheless, whenever our movements are not controlled by thought and intelligent purpose, but are left to chance and random impulses, like the actions of a man whose reason has been unseated, nothing but error and confusion results;—quite a different state of things from anything we observe in the orderly and beautiful procedure of nature.
It is sometimes said that the operations of nature are spontaneous; and that is exactly what they are. That is the meaning of immanence. “Spontaneous,” used in this sense, does not mean random and purposeless and undetermined: it means actuated and controlled from within, by something indwelling and all pervading and not absent anywhere. The intelligence which guides things is not something external to the scheme, clumsily interfering with it by muscular action, as we are constrained to do when we interfere at all; but is something within and inseparable from it, as human thought is within and inseparable from the action of our brains.
In some partially similar way we conceive that the multifarious processes in nature, with neither the origin nor maintenance of which have we had anything to do, must be guided and controlled by some Thought and Purpose, immanent in everything, but revealed only to those with sufficiently awakened perceptions. Many are blind to the meaning—to the fact even that there is a meaning—in nature; just as an animal is usually blind to a picture, and always to a poem; but to the higher members of our race the Intelligence and Purpose, underlying the whole mystery of existence, elaborating the details of evolution—and ultimately tending to elucidate the frequent discords, the strange humours, and puzzling contradictions of life—are keenly felt. To them the lavish beauty of wild Nature—of landscape, of sunset, of mountain, and of sea—are revelations of an indwelling Presence, rejoicing in its own majestic order.