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:—

"The remark of Lotze is not unjustifiable when he affirms. 'The whole of our apprehension of the world by the senses is one great and prolonged deception.' "

Now this is just what Christian Science maintains; viz., that our apprehension of things through the five senses of hearing, seeing, touching, smelling, tasting, "is one great and prolonged deception;" that while things so perceived appear to be physical or material, they are in reality spiritual. For the only evidence we have of the existence of matter in any form is afforded by these senses, and if the only universe to which they testify is a deception, it is clear that we are without evidence of the existence of any material universe, and to affirm the existence of one is, therefore, absurd.

"After all," says Mr. Huxley, "what do we know of this terrible matter except as the name for the unknown, hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness?" "Matter, then," says Mr. Spencer, "in its ultimate nature, is as absolutely incomprehensible as space and time. Frame what suppositions we may, we find on tracing out their implications that they leave us nothing but a choice between opposite absurdities." Grant Allen, in an article on the late Professor Tyndal, writes, "The charge of materialism could only be brought against such a man by those abject materialists who have never had a glimpse of the profounder fact that the universe as known to us consists wholly of Mind, and that matter is a doubtful and uncertain inference of the human intelligence." And yet, how common it is to hear otherwise well-informed people, we should think, ridiculing Christian Science for its position, there is no matter; "All infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation" (Science and Health, p. 468).

L. H. Jones,
In Winchester (Ky.) Herald.

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