The Monist, Vol. 2, 1891-1892 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 2, 1891-1892 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
Again, Professor Morgan says: “Our constructs are literally our
handiwork.” Our constructs, i. e. our mental signs constructed to
represent realities, constitute our soul; they are we ourselves.
Professor Morgan, as I understand him, does not believe in a mind
behind the psychical facts of mental activity, he does not assume the
pre-existence of mind to the continuum elaborated. His view of mind
appears to be the same as ours. The more noteworthy, then, is his usage
of the term “mind.” It is a remarkable instance of how language naturally
inveigles us into a belief in things in themselves. Words seem to denote
concrete existences and as soon as we use words in this way we are
entangled in dualism.
Prof. F. Max Müller as well as the late Prof. Thomas Hill Green,
the founder of the Oxford transcendentalist school, start from this
assumption, that man’s mental activity is performed by a something which
is quite distinct from it. This something is the thing in itself of the
human soul. Prof. F. Max Müller says:
“If mind is the name of the work, what is the name of the
worker?... It is what we may call the ego as personating the
self; it is what other philosophers call the monon. Let us
call therefore the worker who does the work of the mind in its
various aspects, the Monon or the Ego.”
This conception which asks for the worker of the work is based upon a
materialistic view of the human organism. An organism is not a dead
machine which must be set a-going by somebody who attends to it.
Organisms are active and not passive, they are living and not dead. Every
part of an organism is a worker and so is the whole. And if we speak of
its “life” we must bear in mind that “life” is an abstract which denotes
a certain inseparable quality of the organism. The work and the worker
are two abstracts of one and the same thing. The reality from which these
terms have been abstracted is “something working.” This something working
does not consist of a worker and his work, but the worker is in every
part of his work. The worker of our mental activity is the work itself.
Both are identical.
The objection is made: “Whence does the activity come which appears in
the realm of organised life.” The answer is: Activity is a universal
quality of all existence. There is no such a thing as absolutely
inert matter. Every chemical element combines with other elements
spontaneously, according to its inherent nature and not through the
influence of a worker manipulating its atoms. Spontaneity is a universal
feature of reality. Nature is throughout self-working activity. And this
its most remarkable character is preserved in its highest efflorescence
in the soul of man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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