Article August 15, 1903 Issue

As to Matter

L. H. Jones

Winchester (Ky.) Herald

There is no proposition, I suppose, upon which philosophers of all ages are more agreed, than the separation of every created object into its reality and its apparent reality. This essential reality of a thing—say, a tree, a flower, an animal, a man—is called its noumenon to distinguish it from the thing's appearance of reality, which is called its phenomenon. It is evident, that the phenomenon or apparent reality of a thing is to us nothing more or less than our human concept of what the reality of the thing is, it is but a representation in consciousness of what we conceive the thing to be.

Suppose some master artist should exhibit one of his grand paintings to the view of the general public. No two of all the beholders would see the picture alike; that is, no two would see the same picture. To the apprehension of many the picture would mean no more than an agreeable exhibition of deft mechanism, or an ingenious combination and contrasting of colors, while others would catch, with more or less clearness, glimpses of the spiritual meaning, beauty, or reality, back of and beyond the mere question of mechanical execution, and yet, most likely, not one of all the beholders would rise to anything like a full appreciation of the picture's real spiritual beauty, or true reality, even as presented by the canvas, while to the artist alone is reserved the privilege of beholding in his own mind a picture of such transcendent spiritual beauty and reality of perfection as to elude his every effort to give it concrete expression. This picture in the artist's mind which transcends all expression in material form, may be said to be the picture's true reality, or noumenon; the picture suggested by the canvas representations is its phenomenon,—in so far, at least, as the suggested picture is a true likeness of the picture in the artist's mind; while the picture actually present in the consciousness of each beholder may be a very inadequate, inferior, or even grossly distorted percept of the picture really suggested or presented by the canvas. In any event, the canvas representation does not contain or embody the picture, it is but the occasion, the suggestion, sign, or symbol, for the appearance of a picture in consciousness; but the picture, both in its noumenon and phenomenon, both in reality and appearance, dwells, and must ever continue to dwell, in mind only.

So, with the vast and exquisitely wrought panorama which Creation presents to our view, and since we cannot form an adequate conception of the works of a human artist, shall we not realize that, in proportion, our poor human and material concept of God's works must be scarcely more than a wretched travesty of those works which, nevertheless, continue to exist, in all their changeless and eternal reality of spiritual beauty and perfection, in the One Mind which so conceived them "in the beginning"? And is it any wonder that Professor Ladd of Yale, should endorse the conclusion of the great Christian philosopher of Germany, as he does on page 349 in his "Physiological Psychology," in the following terms:—

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