Looking Back: An AutobiographyRichardson, Merrick Abner
History
Looking Back: An Autobiography
Richardson, Merrick Abner
Richardson, Merrick Abner, 1841-
_David Hume_: "Ideas are but weakened copies of impressions."
_Herbert Spencer_: "No idea or feeling arises save as the result of
some physical force expended in producing it."
The teachings of this school of instructors are peculiar, inasmuch
as no such ambiguity concerning reason or will power has heretofore
been taught at large or sanctioned by any class of instructors in the
history of our world. The attempt to shelter under the wing of the
ancient Greeks is plainly a misconstruction, for the wise Greek bowed
in wonder before unknown cause.
_Pythagoras_, 582 B. C., used as the base of his arguments
transmigration of the soul. One of his expressions was: "The soul is a
harmony chained to the body."
_Socrates_: "Design proves that existence is God."
_Aristotle_: "Thinking or thought is God Theology--Soul always thinking
is immortal."
Thus I might quote from deep thinkers from Zoroaster down to our times.
If one feels disposed to study the works of those self-styled liberal
exponders from Spinoza to James, they will find their arguments running
essentially in the same groove, virtually this: Animals, including men,
are not possessed by an invisible guide. That something which discerns
between right and wrong and dictates to the body whether it should
follow the path of desire or virtue, they absolutely ignore. Because
they cannot comprehend the mysteries of the soul, they dwell upon and
cling to tangible material effects, actually assuming effect without
cause. They disallow that the good Samaritan and the Levite had exactly
the same exterior stimuli. They are like the woman at Jacob's well, who
could comprehend the well and mountain, but could not comprehend the
invisible spring. She awoke when told how her secrets were known, but
they awake not, as the result of intention.
James makes a feeble attempt to prove that matter thinks when he says:
"Every individual cell has its own consciousness, which no other cell
knows anything about--associated by brain paths."
What profound reasoning; think of it. Betts tells us that there are
three thousand million cells, or neurons, in an adult nervous system;
then think of the paths leading from one cell to the other. We learn
that light, or electricity, would travel around our world eight times
in one second; I wonder, if at the same rate of speed, how long it
would take an exterior stimulus to cover the distance over one of his
brain paths, from cell to cell.
"Oh," but one says, "Richardson, you do not understand James."
Allowed, but if a man of my experience does not understand materialism,
how is a youth of twenty years expected to understand it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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