logarithms, etc., our mind can derive no benefit from the coöperation
of a material organ. In such thinking we are conscious of that which
could not make an impression nor leave a record upon material receptors
like neurons. To employ a material organ for the purpose of perceiving
abstract essences and qualities would be as futile and pointless as an
attempt to stop a nondimensional, unextended, intangible baseball with
a catcher’s glove. Hence the services of material centers and receptors
may be dispensed with, so far as rational thought is concerned.
Rational thought cannot utilize the intrinsic coägency of the organism,
and it is therefore a superorganic or spiritual function.
That conceptual thought is in no wise communicated to the organism,
but subjected in the spiritual soul alone, is likewise apparent from
the data furnished by introspection. The conceiving mind apprehends
even material objects according to an abstract or spiritualized mode
of representation. In other words, in conceiving material objects
we expurgate them of their materiality and material conditions,
endowing them with a dematerialized mode of mental existence which
they could never have, if subjected in their own physical matter, or
in the organized matter of the cerebral cortex. Thus, in forming our
concept of a material object like a boat, we spiritualize the boat
by separating (representatively, of course, and not physically) its
nature or essence from the determinate matter (_e.g._, wood, or steel)
of which it is made, and by divesting it of the material and concrete
conditions which define not only its physical existence outside of
us, but also its imaginal existence within us as a concrete image
in our imagination. In other words, we isolate the type or form of
a given object from its material substrate and liberate it from the
limiting material and concrete individuation, which confine it to a
single material subject and localize it definitely in space and time.
Now, it is axiomatic that whatever is received is received according
to the nature of the receiver. Water, for example, assumes the form
of the receptacle into which it is poured, and a picture painted
upon canvas is necessarily extended according to the extension of
the canvas. If, therefore, our intellect endows even the material
objects, which it perceives, with a dematerialized or spiritualized
mode of representation, it follows that the intellect itself is a
spiritual power and not an organic sense immersed in concretifying
and individualizing matter. Certainly, this ideal or spiritualized
mode of existence does not emanate from the material object without
nor yet from its vicarious material image in our organic imagination
(which, in point of fact, is absolutely impotent to imagine anything
except concrete, singular things in all their determinate individuation
and quantification). Thought, then, with its _abstract mode of
presentation_, cannot, like imagery, be subjected in the animated or
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