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قراءة كتاب Absurdities of Immaterialism Or, A Reply to T. W. P. Taylder's Pamphlet, Entitled, "The Materialism of the Mormons or Latter-Day Saints, Examined and Exposed."
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Absurdities of Immaterialism Or, A Reply to T. W. P. Taylder's Pamphlet, Entitled, "The Materialism of the Mormons or Latter-Day Saints, Examined and Exposed."
can in your imaginations. Think of its existing where there is no space. Conceive, if you can, of a locality outside of the bounds of a boundless space. Do not your judgments, and every power of your minds revolt at the absolute absurdities and palpable contradictions? By this time, perhaps, you are ready to inquire, can it be possible that any man in all the world could believe in such impossibilities? Yes, it is possible. These very absurdities now stand in bold relief, not only in the most approved philosophical works of modern times, but incorporated in the very "Articles of Religion" which millions have received as their rule of faith.
That spirit or mind has a relation to duration is manifest in the act of remembering. Through the memory the mind perceives itself to be the same conscious being now, that it was, an hour, a day, a year ago; it perceives that itself has existed through a certain period of duration. There is as much certainty of its own relations to duration as there is of any such relation in any other substance whatever. If there is no certainty that mind has a relation to duration, there is no certainty that any other substance has such a relation; hence all would be uncertainty, even our own existence. Bishop Berkeley denied the existence of the material world, and the first Article of his religion swept away the immaterial world from space; and the modern immaterialist sweeps it away from all relation to time. So between them all, space and time are pretty well cleaned out; not so much as a nest egg left to replenish the great infinite void.
Mind, like all other matter, is susceptible of being moved from place to place. We see this exemplified in the movements of the mind through the medium of the body which conveys it from place to place on the surface of the earth. But though man was stationary upon the earth's surface, the earth itself with all its inhabitants, is moving with the rapid velocity of nineteen miles every second, which proves to a demonstration that mind is capable of being moved from place to place with a velocity far exceeding that of a cannon ball. But motion involves the ideas of both space and time. Mind cannot be moved without being moved in space; it cannot pass from point to point instantaneously. However rapid the velocity, time is an essential ingredient to all motion. That eminent and profound philosopher, the late Professor Robison of Edinburgh, says, "In motion we observe the successive appearance of the thing moved in different parts of space. Therefore, in our idea of motion are involved the ideas or conceptions of space and time."
"All things are placed in space, in the order of situation. All events happen in time, in the order of succession."
"No motion can be conceived as instantaneous. For, since a moveable, in passing from the beginning to the end of its path, passes through the intermediate points; to suppose the motion along the most minute portion of the path instantaneous, is to suppose the moveable in every intervening point at the same instant. This is inconceivable and absurd." (Robison's Mechanical Philosophy. Vol I. Introduction.) The motion of mind, therefore is another positive proof that it has a relation to both space and duration.
"Extension and resistance," says Dr. Thomas Brown, "are the complex elements of what we term matter; and nothing is matter to our conception, or a body, to use the simpler synonymous term which does not involve these elements." Figure, magnitude, divisibility, are only different modifications of extension. Solidity, liquidity, viscidity, hardness, softness, roughness, smoothness, are different modifications of resistance. All these terms are only extension and resistance, modified in a certain degree, and under other names. Our notion of extension is supposed by Dr. Brown to be acquired from our notion of time as successive, involving length and divisibility. Our notion of resistance he supposes to be obtained through our muscular organs. These organs are first exerted, and then excited by something without, and in their turn excite the mind with a feeling of resistance. The feeling of resistance combined with the feeling of extension gives us the notion of matter. If Dr. Brown's views be correct, no one can acquire a notion of matter, by seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, or simple touch. Either or all of these will only produce certain feelings in the mind without giving us any notion of an external extended resistance. A muscular effort opposed by some substance or foreign body is the only possible way, according to his theory, for the infant mind to obtain a notion of extended solidity or resistance. (Brown's Philosophy of the Human Mind. From the XX to the XXIX Lecture inclusive.)
If solidity and extension then are the essential characteristics of matter; and if the resistance of a muscular effort be the only possible way of learning these characteristics; it may be asked, how did Dr. Brown learn that the rays of light are material? He has frequently in his philosophy called light material. Has light in any way resisted his muscular efforts? Have the muscular organs ever been able to grasp a ray of light? Have the particles of light either singly or collectively ever acted upon our muscular organs in such manner as to give us a notion of extension and resistance? Have they ever affected the mind in any way only to impart to it the feeling of color? Does not Dr. Brown himself repeatedly affirm, that light can only impart the sensation of color; and that extension, magnitude, figure, solidity, can never be known by the sense of seeing? Does he not assert, that "nothing is matter to our conception which does not involve these elements?" Why then does he assume light to be material?
If, then, light can be ranked as a material substance without exhibiting the least resistance to the muscular organs, why not mind or spirit be considered material also? Why believe that light consists of inconceivably small vibratory or emanating particles of matter from the mere affection of mind called color, and yet be unwilling to believe that the mind affected is material? If that which produces a sensation or feeling be regarded a solid extended substance, independently of muscular resistance, where is the impropriety, in regarding that which receives the sensation or feeling, as a solid extended substance also?
Dr. Brown, and all other immaterialists, universally believe that the sensation of smell is produced by small material particles, acting upon our olfactory nerves. But we ask, how is Dr. Brown or any other person to determine those odorous particles to be material? It may be said, that we determine them to be solid and extended by tracing them to the substances from which they emanate. But can it be proved that they constitute any part of the solid extended substance from which they emanate, any more than light is a part of the substance from which it emanates? We know a rose to be solid and extended, not from the sensation of vision or smell, but from the sensation of resistance which it offers to our muscular organs when we attempt to grasp it. But because a rose is solid and extended, that does not prove that light and fragrance, by which we discern its color and smell, are any part of the rose.
If Dr. Brown's theory be true, it is absolutely impossible to prove that the odoriferous particles which affect us with the sensation of fragrance, are a solid extended substance. These particles of odour appear, indeed, to have been connected in some way with bodies from which they emanate; but there is no possible means for the muscular powers to determine them to be parts of those bodies, any more than the colored light or the heat which are also transmitted from them. No one in speaking of a rose would think of classifying heat and light as a portion of its solid substance; yet both heat and light, like the particles of odour, are intimately connected with it, and are constantly being thrown off from it.
"What is there,"

