Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation: Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert SpencerJones, Jesse Henry
Religion
Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation: Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer
the abiding, the changeless. It is the light of the personal Eye. Into
it all changes come; but they are only _incidental_. In the finite and
partial person, they come, because such person _must grow_; and so,
because of his partiality and incompleteness, they become necessary
incidents; but let there be a Person having all knowledge, who therefore
cannot learn, having all perfection, who therefore cannot change, and it
is plain that these facts in no way interfere with his consciousness.
All variety is immanent in its light, and no change can come into it
because _there is no change to come_; but this Person sees _all_ his
endowments _at once_, in the unity of this his light, just as we see
_some_ of our endowments in the unity of this our light. The change is
not in the consciousness, but in the objects which come into it. This
view also disposes of the theory that "any mental affection must be
known as like these foregoing ones or unlike those"; that, "if it is not
thought of in connection with others--not distinguished or identified by
comparison with others, it is not recognized--is not a state of
consciousness at all." Such comparison we have found only incidental in
consciousness, pertaining to things in the Sense and Understanding and
not essential. Thus does a true psychology dissipate all these
difficulties as a true cosmology explained the perplexities "of Motion
and Rest."
Take another step and we can answer the question "What is this that
thinks?" It is a spiritual person. What, then, is a spiritual person? A
substance--a kind of force--the nature of which we need inquire about no
further than to know that it is suitable to the use which is made of it,
which is organized, according to a set of constituting laws, into such
spiritual person. The substance without the laws would be simple
substance, and nothing more. The laws without the substance would be
only laws, and could give no being having no ground in which to inhere.
But the substance as ground and the complete set of laws as inhering in
the ground, and being its organization when combined, become a spiritual
person who thinks. The _ego_, that is the sense of personality, is only
one of the forms of activity of this being, and therefore cannot be said
to think. The pages now before us are all vitiated by the theory that
"successive impressions and ideas constitute consciousness." Once attain
to the true psychology of the person, and learn that consciousness is as
stated above,--an abiding light into which modifications come,--and
there arises no difficulty in believing in the reality of self, and in
entirely justifying that belief by Reason. Yea, more, from such a
standpoint it is utter unreason, the height of folly, to doubt for an
instant, for immanent and central in the light of Reason lies the solemn
fact of man's selfhood. We arrive, then, directly at Mr. Spencer's
conclusion, that "Clearly, a true cognition of self implies a state in
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