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Untitled Article
tion against natural science any more than it is against mathematical learning , that it teaches nothing of God , as we are taught to know God in morality and religion : but it is a great error to require of it what lies wholly without its province , that is , moral and religious truth . The term Philosophy has contributed to the confusion and its consequences : in antiquity the philosopher united the two offices of a teacher of natural science and a teacher of moral wisdom ; and proposed not merely to assist the inquirer into nature , but to build up the whole intellectual and moral man . " — ( Seebold . )
Naturalism ,, Spiritualism . —In France the Naturalists intrench themselves within their exclusive maxim—sur le principede la certitude . They acknowledge no reality but the facts of the sensible world . Hence the facts of consciousness , —that we feel , think , and will , —since they are undeniable , must be regarded in no other light than as the product of a material organ . This or ^ an is their proper cause , and not a mere instrument in the service of the real power . On the other side , Spiritualism , which prevails in Germany , and has now very eloquent advocates in France , denies the existence of
material forces , and contemplates the material universe only as a vast apparatus of organs or instruments . In every conjuncture of events we see only the sequence . The force acts through the proper instruments ; but the organ is no more the power , than the engine is the steam . Since nothing but conjunction is ever discerned by our senses , if there is no reality but the facts which are observed by sense , or inductions from them , a cause is not a reality , and the whole doctrine of causes is a fiction . It is not surprising that Spiritualism should be pronounced a word of no signification by a late
Westminster Reviewer , who defines a sensation to be , the reception , in the brain or spinal cord , of an impression which has been received in the organ of sense , communicated to the nerve , and transmitted by the nerve to the brain or spinal cord ; and who resolves all mental phenomena into associated sensations—that is , by his definition , impressions received and combined in the cerebral organ . These indeed are words of great signification . They denote the change of an impression into a sensation , by a simple transfer from one portion of nervous matter upon another portion of nervous matter , which is differently lodged .
Jouffroy ( Ancien Maitre de 1 * ecole Normale , ) remarks , in a very sensible preface to his translation of Stewart ' s Moral Philosophy , ' that physiologists nave never seen , and will never be able to see , that it is the brain itself which feels , thinks , and wills ; and that all the facts of their observation respecting the connexion which exists between the organ and the phenomena of consciousness may be explained on the supposition , that the brain , like the nerves , is but an intermediate between the principle of sense , intelligence , will , and the external object , just as well as on the supposition that it
is itself the principle . Whence it follows , that the latter assertion is purely hypothetical . It is possible , that in a more extensive and profound acquaintance with the facts of consciousness , demonstrative reasons may he found in support of the opinion which refers them to a principle distinct from the cerebral organ : or that , by examining more closely the hypothesis of the physiologist , it may be possible to reduce it ad absurdum . We have
even particular reasons for believing that it can be done . Till then , let it be hypothesis against hypothesis . " Psychology . —Knapp says , 4 < What is the nature or constitution of the soul of man , is one of those dark and difficult questions which can never receive a satisfactory answer in this our terrestrial life . There is nothing in the Bible by which it can be determined : there it is merely opposed to the
Untitled Article
104 Letters from Germany .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1831, page 104, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2594/page/32/
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