Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 58:229 (Jan 1901)
Article: The Passage From Mind To Matter
Author: Jacob Cooper

BSac 58:229 (Jan 1901) p. 1

The Passage From Mind To Matter

Prof. Jacob Cooper

The passage from the world without to that within us is the problem which in some form has ever confronted philosophy. The impossibility of two apparently disparate powers acting on each other is disproven by the fact of their constant interaction, which is the basis and indispensable condition of all knowledge of material nature. The common-sense of mankind is in accord with that philosophic view, which has generally prevailed since men began to examine their own thoughts, that there are two sorts of being in the world,—Mind and Matter; for this Dualistic theory agrees with phenomena, and requires no effort to accept because it appeals both to sense-perceptions and the deductions we derive from them. Consciousness reveals to us an agent which we call ourselves. This receives impressions from something without which we know to be different from the Ego both in position and mode of action. The mind, acting on these sense-perceptions by a power which belongs to itself, discovers the modes by which this external something acts upon it, systematizes these modes of action, terms them laws of matter; and in

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turn employs these laws to gain insight, in order to control that part of the world with which we come in touch.

While the Dualistic view has been the prevailing one, there have been many profound thinkers who held to Monism, i.e., that all Reality is one. On this theory the apparent difference between what are called mind and matter does not at bottom indicate diverse essences, but the same under different manifestations. But this view as held hitherto requires a diversity in the mode of action so great that it involves virtually the same Dualism as the other, which recognizes two essentially different agents. For there is necessarily a passage from one factor to the other, a bridge to be crossed of equal width whether the factors which act on each other are disparate in their nature or only in phenomena. For one is active, the other passive; the one conscious subject, the other unconscious object; the one commands, the other obeys; and, in order to effect this, there must be a passage from one to the other, whatever be the space between them. In the strictest Monism of Sankhya philosophy, according to which the outward world is wholly illusory, the phenomena which the mind perceives are not the mind itself, but impressions conveyed to it by the “five gateways of knowledge.” It is evident that such an explanation of Nature is a paralogism. For, if there be illusion, there must be something to cause, and something to receive, the illusion; if there be gateways of knowledge for even deception to enter, these must come from somewhere and be caused by something. For,...