Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2): With an Account of his Parliamentary Struggle, Politics and Teachings. Seventh EditionRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2): With an Account of his Parliamentary Struggle, Politics and Teachings. Seventh Edition
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Bradlaugh, Charles, 1833-1891
it has any meaning, stands to be made of all other correlations of
phenomena. When I strike a match on the box, I evoke the phenomena of
light and heat. In scientific terms, I set up by friction a chemical
action quite "discontinuous" with motion in mass, and this in turn
sets up a wave-motion in the hypothetical ether (of which I can form
no conception) representing light. Materialism no more "splits" on the
one "rock" than on the other.[94] The one special difficulty as to
consciousness is a difficulty that affects all philosophies alike: the
difficulty that it is consciousness that must analyse consciousness.
Neither by predicating "mind-stuff" nor by alleging "soul" is that
difficulty evaded. There still remains the admitted correlation
between brain-and-nerve action and thought; and that correlation is on
all-fours with those of physics so-called. As the case is put by Dr
John Drysdale (after reasonings to an apparently different effect),
"It may be held proved in physiology that for every feeling, every
thought, every volition, a correlative change takes place in the nerve
matter;" and it is scientific to say with him that the phenomena of
mind as a function "require no further explanation" than the conditions
of those changes. When Dr Ferrier writes that "no purely physiological
explanation can _explain_ the phenomena of consciousness," unless
he simply means that there a psychological or logical element (not
Spiritism) must enter into the explanation, he is merely stumbling
in the old way over the word "explain." What is "explanation"? As
Professor Pearson laboriously shows, and as Hume showed long ago,
all that takes place in our explanations of physical phenomena is
recognition of a routine of sense experience. The theological habit
has given men a pseudo-conception of "explanation;" and though they
have learned to dispense with that process in physics, they still
confusedly demand it in biology and psychology. But the very men who
at one time talk of "mystery" and "gulf" between matter and mind, at
other times recognise that the mystery is no more and no less in one
correlation than in another. Thus Tyndall, who elsewhere verbalises
against "Materialism," after describing the development of the human
organism from the egg, writes: "Matter I define as that mysterious
thing by which all that is accomplished." Well, that is "modern
Materialism" or nothing; the Materialism of Büchner and of Bradlaugh.
The mere doctrinal or pragmatic expressions of single physicists
count for nothing. As Bradlaugh put it in his debate with the Rev. Mr
Westerby, it is the cases of Ferrier that count, not his opinions. The
best observer is not the best formulator or thinker; and the art or
science of logical speech is not gratuitously thrown in with either
mathematical or artistic faculty. To turn the data of science into
philosophy is a specialist's work.
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