Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
We here state simply an intuitive conviction. The mind, in using
its physical organism and through it bringing external nature into
its service, recognizes itself as different from and superior to
matter. See Martineau, quoted in Brit. Quar., April, 1882:173, and
the article of President Thomas Hill in the Bibliotheca Sacra,
April, 1852:353—“All that is really given by the act of
sense-perception is the existence of the conscious self, floating
in boundless space and boundless time, surrounded and sustained by
boundless power. The material moved, which we at first think the
great reality, is only the shadow of a real being, which is
immaterial.” Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 317—“Imagine an
infinitesimal being in the brain, watching the action of the
molecules, but missing the thought. So science observes the
universe, but misses God.” Hebberd, in Journ. Spec. Philos.,
April, 1886:135.
Robert Browning, “the subtlest assertor of the soul in song,”
makes the Pope, in The Ring and the Book, say: “Mind is not
matter, nor from matter, but above.” So President Francis Wayland:
“What is mind?” “No matter.” “What is matter?” “Never mind.”
Sully, The Human Mind, 2:369—“Consciousness is a reality wholly
disparate from material processes, and cannot therefore be
resolved into these. Materialism makes that which is immediately
known (our mental states) subordinate to that which is only
indirectly or inferentially known (external things). Moreover, a
material entity existing _per se_ out of relation to a cogitant
mind is an absurdity.” As materialists work out their theory,
their so-called matter grows more and more ethereal, until at last
a stage is reached when it cannot be distinguished from what
others call spirit. Martineau: “The matter they describe is so
exceedingly clever that it is up to anything, even to writing
Hamlet and discovering its own evolution. In short, but for the
spelling of its name, it does not seem to differ appreciably from
our old friends, Mind and God.” A. W. Momerie, in Christianity and
Evolution, 54—“A being conscious of his unity cannot possibly be
formed out of a number of atoms unconscious of their diversity.
Any one who thinks this possible is capable of asserting that half
a dozen fools might be compounded into a single wise man.”
2. Since the mind’s attributes of (_a_) continuous identity, (_b_)
self-activity, (_c_) unrelatedness to space, are different in kind and
higher in rank than the attributes of matter, it is rational to conclude
that mind is itself different in kind from matter and higher in rank than
matter.
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