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Updated: June 15, 2025
First, From the Nature of the Soul it self, and particularly its Immateriality; which, tho' not absolutely necessary to the Eternity of its Duration, has, I think, been evinced to almost a Demonstration.
Buddhism has a voluminous theology, a profound philosophy, a literature vast as the sea. Shinto has no philosophy, no code of ethics, no metaphysics; and yet, by its very immateriality, it can resist the invasion of Occidental religious thought as no other Orient faith can.
Laycock affirms 'that matter is fundamentally nothing more than that which is the seat of motion to ends, of which mind is the source and cause. Professor Huxley crowns the statement by saying, 'That which perceives or knows is mind or spirit, and therefore, that knowledge which the senses give us, is, after all, a knowledge of spiritual phenomena. Professor Faraday held to the immateriality of physical objects.
I believe this brief exposition of the principles of that famous atheist will be sufficient for the present purpose, and that without entering farther into these gloomy and obscure regions, I shall be able to shew, that this hideous hypothesis is almost the same with that of the immateriality of the soul, which has become so popular.
Nowadays we have greatly refined our notion of materiality and substantiality; but there were even some among the Fathers of the Church to whom the immateriality of God Himself was not a thing so clear and definite as it is for us.
To maintain that the existence of one being demonstrably proves the existence of an anterior being, would be, in fact, denying that any thing was self- existent. The fallacy of such a position is too glaring to need refutation. Thirdly, It is not possible he should have a distinct, positive idea of immateriality, of which be, as well as the theologian, labours to prove the existence.
It is thus with immateriality: it has passed current from father to son for many ages, without these having done any thing more than habitually consign to their brain those obscure ideas which were at first attached to it, which it is evident, from the admission even of its advocates, can never be removed, to admit others of a more enlightened nature.
Priestley seems to have fluctuated for a time between two opposite extremes, that of spiritualizing Matter, and that of materializing Mind; for, in a very remarkable passage, we find him saying, "This scheme of the immateriality of Matter, as it may be called, or rather, the mutual penetration of Matter, first occurred to my friend Mr.
It is from thence has successively sprung his notions of SPIRITUALITY, IMMATERIALITY, IMMORTALITY; in short, all those vague unmeaning words he has invented by degrees, in order to subtilize and designate the attributes of the unknown power, which he believes he contains within himself; which he conjectures to be the concealed principle of all his visible actions when man once imbibes an idea that he cannot comprehend, he meditates upon it until he has given it a complete personification: Thus he saw, or fancied he saw, the igneous matter pervade every thing; he conjectured that it was the only principle of life and activity; he proceeded to embody it; he gave it his own form; called it JUPITER, and ended by worshipping this image of his own creation, as the power from whom he derived every good he experienced, every evil he sustained.
We have seen the ruinous foundations upon which men have hitherto erected this fanciful idea of immateriality; we have examined the proofs which they have offered, if proofs they can be called, in support of their hypothesis; we have sifted the evidence they have been willing to have accredited, in order to establish their position; we have pointed out the numberless contradictions that result from their want of union on this subject, from the irreconcileable qualities with which they clothe their imaginary system.
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