CHAPTER XI THE METAPHYSICAL PROBLEMS § 1. On a pyramid in the Temple of Isis at Sais an old inscription contained the following words: "I am everything that was, that is, and that will be, and no mortal has ever lifted the veil that covers my immortality." Modern science maintains that it has pierced the veil, and that "force" and "matter' are everything that was and will be. Whether it is true or not, this is not the place to discuss. What we merely wish to state is that, successfully or not, the human mind has done its best to lift the veil and tried to penetrate the hidden secret so jealously guarded. "Der Mensch ist nicht geboren die Probleme der Welt zu lösen, wohl aber zu suchen, wo das Problem angeht und sich sodann in der Grenze des Begreiflichen zu halten," says Goethe. The human mind has read the riddle of the universe in various ways and explained it accordingly. Among the questions to which man has always endeavoured to evolve an answer, viz. What is? What do I know? and What am I to do? the first one, the metaphysical What is ?-What exists?--has principally excited human curiosity. The replies given by philosophers at various ages have differed greatly, and have given rise to many metaphysical schools. If we ask an ordinary, practical man to tell us what exists, he would reply, without hesitation: "Why, everything that surrounds me, that vast multitude of things that I see and hear and grasp and touch, the skies and the earth, the trees and the rivers, the sun and the stars, the birds in the air, the fish in the water, and the animals in the wood-in a word, all that I see and grasp and touch." Yet among these many things there is a difference; there are some that move, walk, creep, or fly, whilst others are motionless-the first live, whilst the others are lifeless. The living things themselves, when touched by the hand of death, cease to show these signs of movement and become motionless. 66 "These limbs, whence had we them? this stormy force, this life-blood with its burning passion? They are dust and shadow." 'A little while ago, they were not; a little while, and they are not, these very ashes are not.' But what is it, we ask, that produces that change? My brother, Awake!-why liest thou so on the green earth? -thou wert full of life this morn. But he cannot be dead!—Is silence death? Such were the words which Byron puts in the mouth of Cain when he sees Abel dying, and finds himself for the first time in the presence of death, and such words have been repeated many and many a time. The human mind came to the conclusion that something invisible, something that we comprehend but cannot see, something immaterial had its abode in all living things. This "being" is a spirit, in a word the "soul." It is this spirit that gave life and movement to living things, and when that was gone they remained motionless and lifeless. This belief in a soul has found acceptance among all peoples, and philology has proved that there is no language where the word is not found. Thus already from the very beginning man, even without philosophizing, distinguished between matter and spirit. Matter perishes, spirit is immortal. Thou canst not all die- BYRON. The philosopher, however, not satisfied with such vague notions, tried to find the fundamental principle which lies behind all existence, and from which all things proceed. "There is nothing but spirit," said the one, all matter is phenomenal. This theory is called Spiritualism (or sometimes misnamed Idealism). "No, there is only matter," said the other, "all life and motion are nothing but a function or a quality inherent in matter, ceasing entirely with the disintegration of the matter to which it is attached.' This theory is called Materialism. Others again maintained that there were two principles-matter and spirit-and that these were united. This doctrine In contra is styled dualism, from the Latin duo, two. distinction to the theory of Dualism is the theory that maintains there is only one principle; this is called Monism, from the Greek μóvos (monos), alone. MATERIALISM AND SPIRITUALISM § 2. In one of the rooms of the Vatican there exists the famous fresco of Raphael, called "The School of Athens." Aristotle and Plato are the central figures, surrounded by various disciples and followers. Plato points with his finger towards heaven, whilst Aristotle listens coldly, his right hand stretched out towards the earth. This ideal painting represents not only the history of the School of Athens, but that of human thought, and of the philosophical theories of all ages, materialistic and spiritualistic, that have waged war ever since. The spiritualist points to heaven, the materialist points to earth. Materialism § 3. Materialism is the name given to the doctrine which tries to explain the plurality of phenomena by a single principle, which conceives the world as a unity, and maintains that matter is at the basis of everything. It denies the separate existence of spirit, which is attached to matter or removed from it, "like horses fastened to or removed from a coach." The times are past," says Moleschott, "when spirit was assumed to exist independently of matter." Opposed, like Spiritualism, to the philosophical conception which maintains that the ultimate phenomenon is not one, but two principles--i.e. 66 matter and mind, and which is known as the theory or Dualism-Materialism maintains that there is nothing but matter. What we call mind is only one of the forms which ever-changing, ever-varying matter assumes. Matter, however, is not that inert, lifeless mass into which a pure spiritual force brooding over it, apart from it, infuses life. Force is inherent in matter, manifesting itself in its various transformations. Life and thought are its innate qualities, and are the result of a complex combination of molecules of matter. A force, a spirit, a God separate from matter, floating freely above it, giving impulse to it, is an idle conception, according to one of the modern materialists, Moleschott. An absolute spirit as opposed to matter, an absolute creative force distinct from matter, is an absurdity. All psychical phenomena again are nothing but functions of one of our organs-the brain. Thoughts, volitions, and sentiments depend upon its power and working, its size and constitution. Psychology is the physiology of the brain. Thought is nothing but a motion of matter and vanishes with matter. Mental function is a peculiar manifestation of vital power, determined by the peculiar construction of cerebral matter. The same power which digests by means of the stomach thinks by means of the brain. The idea of an individual soul, separate and distinct from the body, independent of the material organ, is a mere verbiage of philosophical psychologists, of no scientific value. In a word, everything is matter or a manifestation of matter. Matter is infinite and immortal, its laws are immutable and eternal. Neither God nor man has created it; it has always existed and will exist for ever, unalterable and imperishable. Nothing is lostnot an atom, not a molecule. It only changes its form, and Imperious Cæsar, dead and turned to clay, SHAKESPEARE. Professor Carl Vogt went even so far in his definition of thought as to say that the brain produces thought in the same way as the liver produces bile and the kidneys urine. The soul, life, thought, and conscience are products of matter; they are latent in every atom of matter, and manifest themselves in a complexity of atoms. The more complicated the material conditions of the organs, the more complex are the effects of their functions. One of the most wonderfully, delicately, and finely constructed organs is the brain, with its function "thought." Matter, however, is not an inert, hard mass, devoid of intrinsic movement, incapable of producing by itself, without the help of another force, the phenomena of life and mind and consciousness. Matter is not always tangible and visible. It consists of uncounted millions of molecules in a gaseous, invisible, inorganized state. By virtue of the harmonious movements of these molecules, matter assumes various forms, giving rise to various phenomena and manifestations like hardness, softness, colour, motion, extension, size, etc., which are only the outcome of the activity of matter. Life and thought belong to the same manifestations. They are not material, however, in themselves; they are, as Buechner says, in his "Last Words on Materalism," not "what matter is, but what matter does." Matter, consisting of small infinitesimal particles (the molecules), is not equally distributed in space, but is grouped in masses-as in nebulæ, clouds, suns, planets, and other heavenly bodies. Like matter itself, so the motion of the molecules or that of the composition of molecules is not equal and uniform. Some parts of matter are in a very animated movement, others move only slowly and sluggishly. Matter passed through numerous phases of evolution until it took the shape of our earth, as a condensed, solid, and independent body. Man, too, passed through phases of evolution until the brain, the organ of thought, reached the height of development which results in our modern civilization. With regard to death Buechner expresses his views as follows: 1 "Great philosophers have called death the fundamental cause of all Philosophy. If this be correct, the empirical or experimental philosophy of the present 1 " Man in the Past, Present, and Future," London, 1872, p. 225. The reader who takes a particular interest in the subject should also consult Buechner's Das künftige Leben u. die moderne Wissenschaft," Leipzig, 1889. |
