It appears to me, therefore, that what we should really find, if we
could trace in detail the metamorphosis of motions within the body, from
the sense-organs to the brain, and thence outward to the muscular
system, would be somewhat as follows: the inward motion, carrying the
message into the brain, would perish in giving place to the vibration
which accompanies the conscious state; and this vibration in turn would
perish in giving place to the outward motion, carrying the mandate out
to the muscles. If we had the means of measurement we could prove the
equivalence from step to step. But where would the conscious state, the
thought or feeling, come into this circuit? Why, nowhere. The physical
circuit of motions is complete in itself; the state of consciousness is
accessible only to its possessor. To him it is the subjective equivalent
of the vibration within the brain, whereof it is neither the cause nor
the effect, neither the producer nor the offspring, but simply the
concomitant. In other words the natural history of the mass of
activities that are perpetually being concentrated within our bodies,
to be presently once more disintegrated and diffused, shows us a closed
circle which is entirely physical, and in which one segment belongs to
the nervous system. As for our conscious life, that forms no part of the
closed circle but stands entirely outside of it, concentric with the
segment which belongs to the nervous system.
These conclusions are not at all in harmony with the materialistic view
of the case. If consciousness is a product of molecular motion, it is a
natural inference that it must lapse when the motion ceases. But if
consciousness is a kind of existence which within our experience
accompanies a certain phase of molecular motion, then the case is
entirely altered, and the possibility or probability of the continuance
of the one without the other becomes a subject for further inquiry.
Materialists sometimes declare that the relation of conscious
intelligence to the brain is like that of music to the harp, and when
the harp is broken there can be no more music. An opposite view, long
familiar to us, is that the conscious soul is an emanation from the
Divine Intelligence that shapes and sustains the world, and during its
temporary imprisonment in material forms the brain is its instrument of
expression. Thus the soul is not the music, but the harper; and
obviously this view is in harmony with the conclusions which I have
deduced from the correlation of forces.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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