CHAPTER IV

MIND AND MATTER APPEAR TO BE MUTUALLY INCOMMENSURABLE

AN observer can scarcely fail to notice the striking dissimilarity that exists between the manifestations and laws of what we call Mind and the manifestations and laws of what we call Matter. They are apparently wholly disparate and heterogeneous; and being so, they seem clearly to indicate that Mind and Matter themselves are, in their nature, wholly unlike-wholly incommensurable with each other.

Aristotle's proof-Of course, this has long been noticed. "Nothing bodily," says Aristotle, "can, at the same time, in the same part, receive contraries. The finger cannot at once be wholly participant of white and of black; nor can it, at once and in the same place, be both hot and cold. But the sense at the same moment apprehends contraries. Wherefore it knows that this is first and that, second, and that it discriminates the black from the white. In what manner does does sight simultaneously receive contraries? Does it do so by the same? Or does it by one part apprehend black, by another, white? If it does so by the same, it must apprehend these mutual parts, and it is incorporeal. But if by one part it apprehends this quality, and by another, that, I perceived this, and you, that. that which judges should be one it should even apprehend by the

this is the same as if But it is necessary that and the same, and that same, the objects which

are judged. Body cannot at the same moment and by the same part apply itself to contraries or things absolutely different. But sense at once applies itself to black and to white; it therefore applies itself indivisibly. It is thus shown to be incorporeal. For if by one part it apprehended white, by another part apprehended black, it could not discern the one colour from the other." So, Kant: "I can apprehend the variety of my representations in one consciousness . . . otherwise, I must have as many-coloured and various a self as are the representations of which I am conscious." 2

Inadequacy of Matter to account for Mental Manifestations. If Mind were Matter,-i.e. something possessing length, breadth and thickness; something solid, divisible and so forth; how on earth would it, as such, be able to comprehend the solar system? In the name of possibility, how are the Sun and the Moon and the stars to roll about in the human head (if it be a mere block) at the right distances from one another? How are they to be placed, how are they to be spaced, within the few cubic inches of human brain? In space they require billions and billions of cubic miles in which to perform their revolutions. Yet does our little human mind, great in its littleness, intellectually embrace glorious parts of the Divine Macrocosm. Ingeniously, also, and reverently can it trace and calculate, to some extent, the movements thereof. This mental something is, evidently, a something wholly different from the material something.

Sir John Davies on this subject.-I find that Sir John Davies, a writer not half well enough known, has followed

1 Quoted by Sir W. Hamilton from Philoponous, paraphrasing Aristotle

(De Anima, Bk. iii. c. ii. s. 11): Lectures, vol. i. pp. 250-1.

"the

2 Critique of Pure Reason, p. 83. It is singular to hear that "the Fathers with, perhaps, the single exception of Augustine," taught corporeity of the thinking substance." Hallam, Introduction, vol. iii. p. 242. If this was so, it showed but little perspicacity on the part of the Fathers.

this track of thought. Mind, he admirably argues, cannot be a body.

"Were she a body, how could she remain

Within this body which is less than she?

Or how could she the world's great shape contain,
And in our narrow breasts containèd be?

All bodies are confined within some place,
But she all place within herself confines;
All bodies have their measure and their space;
But who can draw the soul's dimensive lines?

No body can at once two forms admit,
Except the one the other do deface;

But in the soul ten thousand forms do sit,
And none intrudes into her neighbour's place.

All bodies are with other bodies filled,
But she receives both Heaven and Earth together;
Nor are their forms by rash encounter spilled,
For there they stand and neither toucheth other.

Nor can her wide embracements filled be,
For they that most and greatest things embrace,
Enlarge thereby their mind's capacity

As streams enlarged, enlarge the channel's space.

All things received do such proportion take
As those things have wherein they are received;
So, little glasses little faces make,

And narrow webs on narrow frames be weaved.

Then what vast body must we make the mind

Wherein are men, beasts, trees, towns, seas and lands;
And yet each thing a proper place doth find,
And each thing in the true proportion stands."1

But why talk of the Macrocosm in relation to the Mind? If Mind is mere matter, in the ordinary sense of the word, how is it to embrace a tea-kettle! By the human head, even a tea-kettle can only be intellectually apprehended.

1 "Of the Soule of Man," Poetical Works, vol. i. pp. 42-3.

Love, hate, joy, grief,-of what length, breadth or thickness are they? Or can they be thought of in terms of magnetic currents or electrical voltage, or anything of that sort? I think not. It seems as if they could only be intellectually or spiritually apprehended.

Volition, how can that be mixed up with material properties?

Honour, Religion,-are they long, broad, thick, solid or liquid, or gases of some kind? Are they resolvable into magnetic or electrical discharges from some kind of battery? Gibberish! The materialist seems to be quite fond of darkness and the shadow of death. It would give me great pleasure to destroy his altars and break down his images and cut down his groves.

A red

"Honest man does not mean a long, broad or thick, or a red, green or yellow man! The concept cannot be expressed at all, except figuratively, in the language applicable to material things; nor can its opposite. man is conceivable as to his body only, not as to his thinking apparatus. "A righteous, godly and sober life," cannot be thought of at all, in the language of physics; it can only be intellectually or spiritually apprehended. Honour and Religion exist inasmuch as, in their majesty, they can, on occasion, throw defiance in the teeth of all the blind powers, however crushing they may be. The materialist lantern is a mere aid to darkness.

Mr. Mallock truly says that "if there is nothing in mind and consciousness which was not previously in matter, matter must contain, potentially, everything that is in mind and consciousness. Accordingly, in proportion to the completeness with which we assent to the doctrine that the mind is material, it will become evident that conversely, matter must itself be mental. If mind be organised matter, matter must be unorganised mind."1 But the hypothesis of their unity explains nothing, and 1 Contemporary Review, July 1905.

the incommensurable nature of their qualities renders it

unwarrantable.

An endless marvel, indeed, is the human mind:

"She bringeth heat and cold, and moist and dry,
And life and death, and peace and war together;
Ten thousand fighting things in her do lie,

Yet neither troubleth nor disturbeth either."1

In a word, mental and material properties and manifestations are so completely heterogeneous and incommensurable with each other, that it seems utterly impossible for them to be of the same nature. We utterly fail to find any common footing between them without stultifying ourselves and arriving at ridiculous conclusions. To confound Mind with Matter, brings Chaos back again.

If inquirers from the beginning had been contented, as they should have been, to accept the simple and inexpugnable facts and laws presented to them in Nature -however inscrutable they be, as the only possible basis and material of knowledge, it would have saved the world from a whole wilderness of vain psychological and metaphysical speculations, and splendidly helped to promote the sanity of mankind.

1 Sir John Davies: "Of the Soule of Man," p. 97.