If we admit a distinction between mind and matter, and the result we
speak of be purely mental, we should contradict the universal law
of nature to assign such a product to mere matter, inasmuch as the
natural law forbids in the lower the production of the higher. Take
an example from one of the lower forms of organic life,--a common
vegetable. Will any one assert that the surrounding inorganic elements
of air, earth, heat, and water produce its peculiar form? Though some,
or all, of these may be essential to its developement, they are so
only as its predetermined correlatives, without which its existence
could not be manifested; and in like manner must the peculiar form of
the vegetable preëxist in its life,--in its _idea_,--in order to
evolve by these assimilants its own proper organism.
No possible modification in the degrees or proportion of these
elements can change the specific form of a plant,--for instance, a
cabbage into a cauliflower; it must ever remain a cabbage, _small or
large, good or bad. _ So, too, is the external world to the
mind; which needs, also, as the condition of its manifestation, its
objective correlative. Hence the presence of some outward object,
predetermined to correspond to the preëxisting idea in its living
power, is essential to the evolution of its proper end,--the
pleasurable emotion. We beg it may be noted that we do not say
_sensation_. And hence we hold ourself justified in speaking of
such presence as simply the occasion, or condition, and not, _per
se_, the cause. And hence, moreover, may be inferred the absolute
necessity of Dual Forces in order to the actual existence of any
thing. One alone, the incomprehensible Author of all things, is
self-subsisting in his perfect Unity.
We shall now endeavour to establish the following proposition: namely,
that the Pleasures in question have their true source in One Intuitive
Universal Principle or living Power, and that the three Ideas of
Beauty, Truth, and Holiness, which we assume to represent the
_perfect_ in the physical, intellectual, and moral worlds, are
but the several realized phases of this sovereign principle, which we
shall call _Harmony_.
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