LITMIR.BIZ

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source derived, the

      determination to think honestly for ourselves instead of endeavouring to

      get our thinking done for us. Let us then commence by enquiring what we

      really mean by the livingness which we attribute to spirit and the deadness

      which we attribute to matter.

      At first we may be disposed to say that livingness consists in the power of

      motion and deadness in its absence; but a little enquiry into the most

      recent researches of science will soon show us that this distinction does

      not go deep enough. It is now one of the fully-established facts of

      physical science that no atom of what we call "dead matter" is without

      motion. On the table before me lies a solid lump of steel, but in the light

      of up-to-date science I know that the atoms of that seemingly inert mass

      are vibrating with the most intense energy, continually dashing hither and

      thither, impinging upon and rebounding from one another, or circling round

      like miniature solar systems, with a ceaseless rapidity whose complex

      activity is enough to bewilder the imagination. The mass, as a mass, may

      lie inert upon the table; but so far from being destitute of the element of

      motion it is the abode of the never-tiring energy moving the particles with

      a swiftness to which the speed of an express train is as nothing. It is,

      therefore, not the mere fact of motion that is at the root of the

      distinction which we draw instinctively between spirit and matter; we must

      go deeper than that. The solution of the problem will never be found by

      comparing Life with what we call deadness, and the reason for this will

      become apparent later on; but the true key is to be found by comparing one

      degree of livingness with another. There is, of course, one sense in which

      the quality of livingness does not admit of degrees; but there is another

      sense in which it is entirely a question of degree. We have no doubt as to

      the livingness of a plant, but we realize that it is something very

      different from the livingness of an animal. Again, what average boy would

      not prefer a fox-terrier to a goldfish for a pet? Or, again, why is it that

      the boy himself is an advance upon the dog? The plant, the fish, the dog,

      and the boy are all equally _alive_; but there is a difference in the

      quality of their livingness about which no one can have any doubt, and no

      one would hesitate to say that this difference is in the degree of

      intelligence. In whatever way we turn the subject we shall always find that

      what we call the "livingness" of any individual life is ultimately measured

      by its intelligence. It is the possession of greater intelligence that

      places the animal higher in the scale of being than the plant, the man

      higher than the animal, the intellectual man higher than the savage. The

      increased intelligence calls into activity modes of motion of a higher

      order corresponding to itself. The higher the intelligence, the more

      completely the mode of motion is under its control: and as we descend in

      the scale of intelligence, the descent is marked by a corresponding

      increase in _automatic_ motion not subject to the control of a

      self-conscious intelligence. This descent is gradual from the expanded

      self-recognition of the highest human personality to that lowest order of

      visible forms which we speak of as "things," and from which

      self-recognition is entirely absent.

      We see, then, that the livingness of Life consists in intelligence--in

      other words, in the power of Thought; and we may therefore say that the

      distinctive quality of spirit is Thought, and, as the opposite to this, we

      may say that the distinctive quality of matter is Form. We cannot conceive

      of matter without form. Some form there must be, even though invisible to

      the physical eye; for matter, to be matter at all, must occupy space, and

      to occupy any particular space necessarily implies a corresponding form.

      For these reasons we may lay it down as a fundamental proposition that the

      distinctive quality of spirit is Thought and the distinctive quality of

      matter is Form. This is a radical distinction from which important

      consequences follow, and should, therefore, be carefully noted by the

      student.

      Form implies extension in space and also limitation within certain

      boundaries. Thought implies neither. When, therefore, we think of Life as

      existing in any particular _form_ we associate it with the idea of

      extension in space, so that an elephant may be said to consist of a vastly

      larger amount of living substance than a mouse. But if we think of Life as

      the fact of livingness we do not associate it with any idea of extension,

      and we at once realize that the mouse is quite as much alive as the

      elephant, notwithstanding the difference in size. The important point of

      this distinction is that if we can conceive of anything as entirely devoid

      of the element of extension in space, it must be present in its entire

      totality anywhere and everywhere--that is to say, at every point of space

      simultaneously. The scientific definition of time is that it is the period

      occupied by a body in passing from one given point in space to another,

      and, therefore, according to this definition, when there is no space there

      can be no time; and hence that conception of spirit which realizes it as

      devoid of the element of space must realize it as being devoid of the

      element of time also; and we therefore find that the conception of spirit

      as pure Thought, and not as concrete Form, is the conception of it as

      subsisting perfectly independently of the elements of time and space. From

      this it follows that if the idea of anything is conceived as existing on

      this level it can only represent that thing as being actually present here

      and now. In this view of things nothing can be remote from us either in

      time or space: either the idea is entirely dissipated or it exists as an

      actual present entity, and not as something that _shall_ be in the future,

      for where there is no sequence in time there can be no future. Similarly

      where there is no

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