Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And WorkMitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), Sir
Science
Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work
Mitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), Sir
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895
In similar fashion he shewed that the hardness, roundness, and even
the singleness of the marble were, so far as we know, states of our
consciousness and not in the marble. The argument is capable of
application to all that we call matter, and it thus appears, on
analysis, that what we know of matter is simply a series of states of
our consciousness, or mind. In similar fashion, it turns out that what
we call mind is, so far as practical experience goes, always
associated with and dependent on what we call matter. We have no
direct knowledge of thinking without a brain, or of consciousness
without a body. Alterations and changes in matter, as for instance in
the tissues and nutrition of the body, are, so far as our experience
goes, inseparably associated with mental operations. In the animal
kingdom we see the development of the mind creeping slowly after the
development of the material nervous system, until, in man, the most
complex mind and most complex consciousness of which we have knowledge
accompany the most complex body and brain.
Two great rival solutions to this fundamental problem are Materialism
and Idealism. Materialism supposes that what we call matter is the
real substance of the universe, and that mind is merely one of the
forms of its activity. The advance of physical science has done much
to make the materialistic hypothesis more plausible. When matter was
believed to be inert, the mere vehicle or theatre of forces,
materialism remained a singularly crude and unsatisfying position. But
now that science has shewn all that we call matter--the most solid
metals and the most attenuated vapours, the most stable and resisting
inorganic bodies, and the unstable tissues of living bodies--to be
alike in restless, orderly motion, to be, in fact, motion itself and
not the thing moved, to be changeable but indestructible, passing
through phases but eternal, there seems less difficulty in assuming it
to be the ultimate reality, and mind and consciousness to be its most
highly specialised qualities. Huxley, while stating this view plainly
enough, refused to accept it as a legitimate conclusion from the
facts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account