The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental ScienceTroward, T. (Thomas)
Religion
The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science
Troward, T. (Thomas)
New Thought
including of _all_ things, and therefore for this intelligence to recognize
anything as being _outside itself_ would be a denial of its own being. We
may therefore say without hesitation that, whatever may be the nature of
its intelligence, it must be entirely devoid of the element of
self-recognition _as an individual personality_ on any scale whatever. Seen
in this light it is at once clear that the originating all-pervading Spirit
is the grand impersonal principle of Life which gives rise to all the
particular manifestations of Nature. Its absolute impersonalness, in the
sense of the entire absence of any consciousness of _individual_ selfhood,
is a point on which it is impossible to insist too strongly. The
attributing of an impossible individuality to the Universal Mind is one of
the two grand errors which we find sapping the foundations of religion and
philosophy in all ages. The other consists in rushing to the opposite
extreme and denying the quality of personal intelligence to the Universal
Mind. The answer to this error remains, as of old, in the simple question,
"He that made the eye shall He not see? He that planted the ear shall He
not hear?"--or to use a popular proverb, "You cannot get out of a bag more
than there is in it;" and consequently the fact that we ourselves are
centres of personal intelligence is proof that the infinite, from which
these centres are concentrated, must be infinite intelligence, and thus we
cannot avoid attributing to it the two factors which constitute
personality, namely, intelligence and volition. We are therefore brought to
the conclusion that this universally diffused essence, which we might think
of as a sort of spiritual protoplasm, must possess all the qualities of
personality without that conscious recognition of self which constitutes
separate individuality: and since the word "personality" has became so
associated in our ordinary talk with the idea of "individuality" it will
perhaps be better to coin a new word, and speak of the personalness of the
Universal Mind as indicating its personal _quality_, apart from
individuality. We must realize that this universal spirit permeates all
space and all manifested substance, just as physical scientists tell us
that the ether does, and that wherever it is, there it must carry with it
all that it is in its own being; and we shall then see that we are in the
midst of an ocean of undifferentiated yet intelligent Life, above, below,
and all around, and permeating ourselves both mentally and corporeally, and
all other beings as well.
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