Büchner. “I have had the opportunity of examining a clairvoyant, of whom remarkable things were told, under circumstances when a deception on the part of the magnetizer was out of the question. The lady failed in all her indications; they were either absolutely false or so expressed that nothing could be made of them. She, moreover, made the most ridiculous excuses for her shortcomings. As she failed in her clairvoyance, she preferred to fall into a state of heavenly ecstasy, in which she discoursed with her ange or tutelar genius, and recited religious verses. In reciting a poem of this kind she once stopped short, and recommenced the verse to assist her memory. She manifested, withal, in this ecstasy, no superior mental capacities; her language was common, and her manner awkward. I left with the conviction that the lady was an impostor who deceived her patron. Still, several gentlemen present were by no means convinced of the deception practised on them” (p. 154).
Reader. If these gentlemen could by no means be convinced of the deception, must we not presume that there was no deception, and that your peculiar construction of the case was brought about by a strong desire of not being disturbed in your fixed idea that there is nothing but matter? If “the lady failed in all her indications,” if “she made the most ridiculous excuses for her shortcomings,” if “she manifested no superior capacities,” it should have been evident to those “several gentlemen” that she was a fraud. Their inability to be convinced of the deception would therefore show that the lady did not fail in all her indications, but manifested superior capacities. Be this as it may, the truth and reality of spiritual manifestations cannot be disproved by particular attempts at imposition. Spiritualists admit that many impositions have been practised under the name of spiritual manifestations, but they aver that in most instances cheats could not have been palmed off, even if designed; and that in other cases there could be no possible motive for deception, as the investigations were carried on in private families where the mediums were their own sons and daughters.[50] Spirit-rapping is a fact. Table-turning is a fact. Clairvoyance is a fact. Thousands of all conditions, sects, and nations have witnessed, watched, and examined all such facts with a degree of attention, suspicion, and [pg 183] incredulity proportionate to their novelty, strangeness, and unnaturalness. What has been the result? A verdict acknowledging the reality of the facts and the impossibility of accounting for them without intelligent preternatural agencies. This verdict disposes of your materialism. To deny the facts in order to save materialism is so much time lost. Facts speak for themselves.
XVI. Innate Ideas
Reader. And now I should like to know, doctor, why you thought proper to fill twenty-seven pages of your Force and Matter with a discussion about innate ideas.
Büchner. For two reasons, sir. First, because “the question whether there be innate ideas is a very old one, and, in our opinion, one of the most important in relation to the contemplation of nature. It decides to some extent whether man, considered as the product of a higher world, has received a form of existence as something foreign and external to his essence, with the tendency to shake off this earthly covering, and to return to his spiritual home; or whether, both in his spiritual and bodily capacity, man stands to the earth which has produced him in a necessary, inseparable connection, and whether he has received his essential nature from this world; so that he cannot be torn from the earth, like the plant which cannot exist without its maternal soil. The question is, at the same time, one which does not dissolve itself in a philosophical mist, but which, so to speak, has flesh and blood, and, resting upon empirical facts, can be discussed and decided without high-sounding phrases” (p. 157). The second reason is, that “if it be correct that there are no innate intuitions, then must the assertion of those be incorrect who assume that the idea of a God, or the conception of a supreme personal being, who created, who governs and preserves the world, is innate in the human mind, and therefore incontrovertible by any mode of reasoning” (p. 184).
Reader. Do you mean, that, by refuting the theory of innate ideas, you will cut the ground from under the feet of the theist and the spiritualist?
Büchner. Yes, sir. Such is the drift of my argumentation.
Reader. Then your labor is all in vain. For you must know that we do not base our demonstration of the substantiality and immortality of the soul on the doctrine of innate ideas, nor do we assume that the notion of a God is an “innate intuition.” Had you been even superficially acquainted with the works of our scholastic philosophers, you would have known that innate ideas are totally foreign to their psychological and theological doctrines. You would have known that the axiom, Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu—that is, “There is nothing in our intellect which has not entered by the gate of the senses”—is not a discovery of your Moleschott, to whom you attribute it, but is an old dictum familiar to all the schoolmen of past centuries, and approved by the most orthodox philosophers of our own time. Now, these philosophers, while denying that we have any innate idea, admit at the same time that our soul is a special substance and is immortal, and show that the human intellect can easily form a concept of God as a supreme cause, and ascertain his [pg 184] existence without need of innate intuitions. This might convince you that your chapter on innate ideas has no bearing on the questions concerning the nature of the soul and the notion of a God. Your assumption that if man has innate ideas, he will have a tendency “to shake off this earthly covering, and to return to his spiritual home,” is incorrect. For the human body has no spiritual home, as is evident; and the human soul, as having no previous existence in a separate state, has no home but in the body, and the presence of innate ideas would not create in it a tendency to shake off its earthly covering. On the other hand, your other assumption, that, if man has no innate ideas, he is “a production of the earth alone, and cannot be torn from the earth, with which he is inseparably connected both in his spiritual and bodily capacity,” is even more incorrect. For the absence of innate ideas does not mean, and does not entail, the absence of an intellectual principle; and such a principle, as evidently immaterial, is not a production of the earth, and has no need of earthly things to continue its existence.
Büchner. How can a soul exist without ideas? And, if all ideas come through our senses, how can a soul exist without being united to the organs? “Daily experience teaches us that man begins his intellectual life only with the gradual development of his senses, and in proportion as he enters into a definite relation to the external world; and that the development of his intellect keeps pace with that of his organs of sense and his organ of thought, and also with the number and importance of the impressions received. ‘Every unprejudiced observer,’ says Virchow, ‘has arrived at the conviction that thought is only gradually developed in man.’ The new-born child thinks as little, and has as little a soul, as the unborn child; it is, in our view, living in the body, but intellectually dead.... The embryo neither thinks nor feels, and is not conscious of its existence. Man recollects nothing of this state, nor of the first period of his existence in which the senses were dormant; and this perfect unconsciousness proves his spiritual non-existence at that period. The reason can only be that, during the fœtal state, there are no impressions whatever received from without, and so weak and imperfect are they in the first few weeks that the intellect cannot be said to exist” (p. 159).
Reader. It is plain that the new-born child cannot form an idea of exterior objects without the use of his senses. But is it true that the new-born child is not conscious of its own existence? Certainly not; for, without a previous knowledge of its own existence, it would never be able to attribute to itself the feelings awakened in it by exterior objects. The mind cannot say, I feel, if it is not already acquainted with the I. Nor does it matter that “man recollects nothing of the first period of his existence.” Recollection is impossible so long as the brain has not acquired a certain consistency; and therefore whatever happens with us in the first period of our existence leaves no durable trace in our organs, and is entirely forgotten. Hence your assertions “that the senses of the new-born child are dormant, and that its perfect unconsciousness proves its spiritual non-existence,” are both false. The child feels its being, its senses are quite ready to [pg 185] receive impressions, and its soul is quite alive to such impressions.