Matter and spirit / read by Mr. Serjeant Cox.

  • Edward William Cox
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Matter and spirit / read by Mr. Serjeant Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    •forces themselves; we feel only the impact of the molecules ;they move. This is a simple, clear, and very definite conception of I matter, and if the term were always used in this sense, what a world of worthless controversy would be swept away ! What, then, in Psychological Science, is spirit? As dis- : tinguished from matter, it is simply non-molecular structure, I that is to say, some one, or more, possibly all, of the many combinations of atoms other than the molecular, but which combinations are imperceptible to our senses. Spirit is all of being that our senses are not constructed to perceive. It may well be—perhaps it is—that matter and spirit are distinctions that are more in ourselves than in them selves. f ! The seeming difference between them may be the result of our own limited powers of perception. It is certain that, if we had one sense more, we should perceive much that now is imperceptible to us, and in such case that which now is spirit to us would be matter to us. On the other hand, if we had been gifted with one sense the less, much that is now matter to us would be spirit to us. But the distinction is not the less real to us in our present condition of existence, nor the less to be recognized b}^ Science. It is the province of Physicists to deal only with percep- tible matter, and to trace the forces by which it is moved and the laws by which it is governed. They rightly recog- nise this as their special work. But not content with their own domain, they travel out of it to assert, without examination or evidence of any kind, that there is no atomic combination other than molecular, or that if there be, as it is imperceptible by the senses, it is unknowable, even unthinkable; that inasmuch as we cannot seize and submit it to the scalpel and the crucible, we are unable even to prove its existence, much less to [128]