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IMMATERIALITY

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · April 8, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 15

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IMMATERIALITY

By Roswell F. Cottrell

IS IT PROOF OF IMMORTALITY?

BY ELD. R. F. COTTRELL.
It is argued that thoughts, being immaterial, cannot proceed directly from a material organization, but must be the product of an immaterial entity in man. They forget that it is just as difficult for Almighty Power to connect that immaterial man with a material organization, as it is to connect immaterial thoughts directly with that organization. It is certain that mind and matter are connected; but who can tell how? I will here quote a sober argument from one of our immaterialistic friends, which he gave in the form of a syllogism, “for the benefit,” as he says, “of any who may wish to combat it.” It is as follows:—
“1. Substances, all of whose phenomena are different, are themselves different; “2. The phenomena of matter and mind are different; “3. Therefore matter and mind are different.
“Whatever, then, matter is, mind is something else, or not matter.
“Now, since the major premise is based on a law fundamental in all philosophy, if the reasoning be faulty, it must be in the minor premise. Are the phenomena of matter and mind different, then? If you affirm that they are alike, then you and I will go to the laboratory and test their qualities. I will take an apple, and you shall take a thought. If the apple and the thought are alike, i. e., if they are both matter, then the same test will apply to both; they will have the same qualities. Now begin. I hold the apple up between my thumb and finger. Now you hold your thought up between your thumb and finger. I press the apple, and find it hard. Do so by the thought. I see the apple; it is red and round. What color and shape is your thought? I bite the apple; it is sour. How does your thought taste? Smell of it; is it fragrant? Now I let go the apple, and it falls to the floor; it is heavy. Now let go your thought; is it heavy? O Materialist, your materialism is heavy. It will fall, whether you let go or not.
“We have now tested the truth of my minor premise. Thought is a phenomenon of the mind. Color, form, etc., are phenomena of matter, and they are as unlike as things can possibly be; and therefore mind and matter are as unlike as they can be; and therefore materialism, which affirms that mind is matter, is as untrue as it can be.
“That part of man, then, which thinks, and feels, and wills, not being matter, is consequently neither dependent upon matter for existence, nor subject to any of the laws which govern matter. Physical dissolution, then, of the body, can affect only the body, having no effect whatever upon the mind, in respect of its essential essence or qualities. What it was before the death of the body, it must remain after that event—essentially a thinking, willing, and feeling entity.”
A vastly large conclusion to draw from so small premises. My pony’s thoughts are different from his body; they do not present the same phenomena. And sometimes when he comes to cross-roads, he chooses and wills to take the road that he thinks leads toward home. Yet I never thought of inferring such astonishingly large conclusions from these facts. Our friends of the opposite side of the question, always forget to take the thoughts of the inferior animals into the laboratory for a test. They leave out of the controversy the wisdom and power of God, which can as easily connect with matter immaterial thoughts as an immaterial soul; and they pursue a course of reasoning which, if valid, would make it just as necessary for horses and dogs to have immaterial souls to connect their immaterial intelligence with their material bodies; and if immateriality is a proof of immortality, man, who boasts of his immortality, is, in this respect, no better than the brute.
The world by wisdom does not yet know God. All that we know of the mysterious connection between mind and matter, or concerning a future life, is what he has seen fit to reveal to us in his word. And since our wisdom or folly cannot improve this revelation, we shall do better to accept of it as it is. That word tells us plainly that man, who was made of dust, on receiving the breath of life, became a living soul. Of the immaterial, immortal soul it says nothing. On the contrary, it calls man mortal, with no part excepted, but promises him a future life by means of a resurrection of the dead, and immortality on condition of his seeking for it in the way of faith and obedience. Our philosophic friends may imagine that they aid the belief in a future life through the resurrection, by proving that man is immortal independent of it; but the effect of their reasoning must be to weaken faith in it, by making it appear that there is no need of it; that man is immortal without it, and can feast his “immortal mind” on all the joys of Paradise, should his corruptible “clay tenement” never be brought up from the dust. And it is having this effect. Thousands upon thousands are coming to deny the resurrection and reject revelation, as the legitimate fruit of their faith in the natural immortality of man. Did our Christian friends realize the real tendency of their efforts in behalf of natural immortality, they would drop their vain philosophy, and maintain the faith of a future life through the resurrection of the dead, instead of asserting that there can be no resurrection of an individual, if he is really and wholly dead. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with them that God should raise the dead? But they virtually deny his power to endow animated matter with thought, and positively declare that he cannot raise the dead, if consciousness has ceased, and all this in the face of innumerable facts of the cessation of consciousness, while the person was living.
But while we mourn over the fact that our friends are unwittingly aiding the cause of spiritualism, the present and most popular form of infidelity, and therefore the most dangerous, they, in turn, feel deeply over our supposed tendency to ancient, materialistic, Epicurean infidelity, a thing that has had its day and run its race, is unpopular, and is now discarded even by Satan himself; he having discovered a more plausible form of deception for this age, suited to the prevailing philosophy.
Who are in danger of being deceived? Where lies the truth? Not in human philosophy or wisdom, either ancient or modern, but in the word of God. May Heaven aid the honest inquirer to lay aside human wisdom, and receive that word in its native simplicity, harmony, and beauty, and thus escape the subtle snare which Satan has been so long weaving for this last generation.
We, as a people, cannot answer for others, but our materialism never “affirms that mind is matter;” and we doubt very much the propriety of packing us in the same box with infidels, and then condemning the lot.
But to discover the fallacy of my friend’s reasoning, I inquire, Do thoughts think? I remember of reading in the old spelling-book, “Thinkers think thoughts.” Thinkers and thoughts are two things. Take, then, to the laboratory a thinker, i. e., one who thinks, and you will find him possessed of as many palpable qualities as your apple. Is it the mind that thinks? But what is a man’s mind but his thoughts?
We have no controversy with our friends of the opposition in respect to there being a difference between mind, or thoughts, and matter. We do not claim that mind is matter; and those who would fairly oppose our views should cease to misrepresent us. The connection between matter and mind is a mystery, which neither our friends nor ourselves are able to explain. Neither do we know how matter can be endowed with animal life; but we know that life is connected with material organizations, and that matter thus endowed is vastly superior, in its susceptibilities, to dead matter. This our friends seem entirely to forget. Their philosophic reasonings concerning matter, all relate to dead matter. Dead brains cannot think. So they come to the conclusion that immaterial thought can have no connection with matter, but must be the product of an immaterial soul which comes in between the mind and matter, and does the thinking; making a chain of two immaterial links and one material. They are not aware that it is just as difficult to connect this middle link, this immaterial soul, with matter, as it is to connect immaterial thoughts with the same; and yet they hold that this soul is connected with matter, and they have never been able to discover one that was not.
The fallacy of the argument is this: Assuming the very point to be proved; namely, that immaterial thoughts can proceed only from an immaterial entity, they imagine the point is proved when they make it appear that thoughts are immaterial. They make thoughts and thinkers the same thing, as though thoughts could think, or produce themselves; and they then gravely conclude that the dissolution of the body can have no effect whatever upon these immaterial things, but that they must continue to think to eternity. And all this in contradiction of the experience of thousands whose thoughts have been cut off, for considerable periods of time, so that they were not conscious of life and being.
The thoughts of horses and dogs, whatever they are, are equally immaterial; but this does not prove that they have a separate, immaterial, immortal entity, which is destined to exist as long as eternity endures.
When will those who talk of philosophy learn true wisdom? When will they see that their wisdom is folly?