Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
There is an increased flow of blood to the head in times of mental
activity. Sometimes, in intense heat of literary composition, the
blood fairly surges through the brain. No diminution, but further
increase, of physical activity accompanies the greatest efforts of
mind. Lay a man upon a balance; fire a pistol shot or inject
suddenly a great thought into his mind; at once he will tip the
balance, and tumble upon his head. Romanes, Mind and Motion,
21—“Consciousness causes physical changes, but not _vice versa_.
To say that mind is a function of motion is to say that mind is a
function of itself, since motion exists only for mind. Better
suppose the physical and the psychical to be only one, as in the
violin sound and vibration are one. Volition is a cause in nature
because it has cerebration for its obverse and inseparable side.
But if there is no motion without mind, then there can be no
universe without God.”... 34—“Because within the limits of human
experience mind is only known as associated with brain, it does
not follow that mind cannot exist without brain. Helmholtz’s
explanation of the effect of one of Beethoven’s sonatas on the
brain may be perfectly correct, but the explanation of the effect
given by a musician may be equally correct within its category.”
Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, 1:§ 56—“Two things,
mind and nervous action, exist together, but we cannot imagine how
they are related” (see review of Spencer’s Psychology, in N.
Englander, July, 1873). Tyndall, Fragments of Science, 120—“The
passage from the physics of the brain to the facts of
consciousness is unthinkable.” Schurman, Agnosticism and Religion,
95—“The metamorphosis of vibrations into conscious ideas is a
miracle, in comparison with which the floating of iron or the
turning of water into wine is easily credible.” Bain, Mind and
Body, 131—There is no break in the physical continuity. See Brit.
Quar., Jan. 1874; art. by Herbert, on Mind and the Science of
Energy; McCosh, Intuitions, 145; Talbot, in Bap. Quar., Jan. 1871.
On Geulincx’s “occasional causes” and Descartes’s dualism, see
Martineau, Types, 144, 145, 156-158, and Study, 2:77.
4. The materialistic theory, denying as it does the priority of spirit,
can furnish no sufficient cause for the highest features of the existing
universe, namely, its personal intelligences, its intuitive ideas, its
free-will, its moral progress, its beliefs in God and immortality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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