Mind and Motion and Monism by George John Romanes

Author:George John Romanes [Romanes, George John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Monism
Published: 2007-08-09T04:00:00+00:00

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One other matter remains to be considered with reference to this world-eject as sanctioned by Monism. It leaves us free to regard all natural causation as a direct exhibition of psychism. The prejudice against anything approaching a theistic interpretation of the Universe nowadays arises chiefly from the advance of physical science having practically revealed the ubiquity of natural causes. It is felt that when a complete explanation of any given phenomenon has been furnished in terms of these causes, there is no need to go further; the phenomenon has been rendered intelligible on its mechanical side, and therefore it is felt that we have no reason to suppose that it presents a mental side—any supplementary causation of a mental kind being regarded as superfluous. Even writers who expressly repudiate this reasoning prove themselves to be habitually under its influence; for we constantly find that such writers, after conceding the mechanical explanations as far as these have been proved, take their stand upon the more intricate phenomena of Nature where, as yet, the mechanical explanations are not forthcoming. Whether it be at the origin of life, the origin of sentiency, of instinct, of rationality, of morality, or of religion, these writers habitually argue that here, at least, the purely mechanical interpretations fail; and that here, consequently, there is still room left for a psychical interpretation. Of course the pleading for theism thus supplied is seen by others to be of an extremely feeble quality; for while, on the one hand, it rests only upon ignorance of natural causation (as distinguished from any knowledge of super-natural causation), on the other hand, abundant historical analogies are available to show that it is only a question of time when pleading of this kind will become more and more restricted in its subject-matter, till eventually it be altogether silenced. But the pleading which Monism is here able to supply can never be silenced.

For, according to Monism, all matter in motion is mind; and, therefore, matter in motion is merely the objective revelation, to us and for us, of that which in its subjective aspect—or in its ultimate reality—is mind. Just as the operations of my friend's mind can only be revealed to me through the mechanical operations of his body, so it may very well be that the operations of the Supreme Mind (supposing such to exist) can only be revealed to me through the mechanical operations of Nature. The only difference between the two cases is that while I am able, in the case of my friend's mind, to elicit responses of mechanical movement having a definite and intended relation to the operations of my own mind, similarly expressed to him; such is not the case with Nature. With the friend-eject I am able to converse; but not so with the world-eject[11]. This great difference, however, although obviously depriving me of any such direct corroboration of psychism in the world-eject as that which I thus derive of psychism in the friend-eject, ought

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