/ ^ · / ΛΓ Ι Γ , Original from
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VjOOgIC
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN1 0 2
THE REALM OF MATTER
soul, so to speak, is then long deadjand buried, and the omnivorous vice has become a soul in its stead.
We are compacted of devils. Love and conscience, like the rest, are initially irrational; and the conserva
tive inner man may strenuously cling to methods in art and to forms of sentiment which defeat his eventual rational nature. The fatal imperative of his daemon may lie deeper in him than any ulterior claim of beauty or happiness.
Thus the spiritual function of the psyche is added to her generative and practical functions, creating a
fresh and unprecedented realm of being, she3hasme the realm of spirit, with its original aesthetic
given birth spectrum and moral range and values incom-
attachecUt mensurable with anything but themselves, to earthly y et tbis whole evocation is a concomitant
interests · , , , ,
function of the same psyche which presides over bodily growth and action. Were it not so, spirit would have no place in time or in nature, no relevance to existence, and indeed, no existence of its own; and even if by a flight of mythological fancy we imagined it existing disembodied, it would thereby have for
feited all its dramatic breathlessness, all its moral aspiration, all its piety and potential wisdom. It would be an abstract intellect without a spiritual life, a hypostasis of the realm of truth or of essence, and not a human virtue. So that the dependence of spirit on animal life is no brutal accident, no inexplicable degradation of a celestial being into the soul of a beast.
All the themes and passions of spirit, however spiritual or immaterial in themselves, celebrate the vicissitudes of a natural psyche, like a pure poet celebrating the adventures of lovers and kings.
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
CH A PTER IX
P S Y C H O L O G IS M
If the movements of matter are due to the nature of matter, not to that of spirit, should not the move
ments of spirit likewise be due to the nature Misguided of spirit, not to that of matter? It might seem attempts to so: and a great part of human philosophy
has been devoted to exploring this tempt- master of ing path. Yet the issue has been complete ^stence confusion; because the nature of spirit is and not, like that of matter, to be a principle of occasions·
existence and movement, but on the contrary a prin
ciple of enjoyment, contemplation, description, and belief; so that while spirit manifests its own nature no less freely than matter does, it does so by freely regarding and commenting on something else, either matter or essence: its primary nature is to be secondary
—to be observant and intelligent. As grammar is arbiter of the syntax of speech, yet contains no power to determine wnen anyone shall speak or what he shall wish to say, so spirit contains no principle to deter
mine its own occasions, its distribution in time and place, or the facts that shall seem to confront it. It cannot originate the animal powers and passions which it comes to express. Existence and movement, even in spirit, are therefore the work of matter; while the perception, the enjoyment, the understanding of both matter and spirit are the life of spirit itself. I f we
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VjOOgIC
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGANdeny this, and insist on assigning to spirit the func
tions proper to matter, spirit, before we know it, has become but another name for matter in our philosophy and in our lives. In this chapter and in the next I will endeavour to justify this assertion.
That a material force, or all material forces, should be called spirit would be nothing new in the history . of language, but rather a reversion to the a name'fbr primitive meaning of the word. Wind is
"“ ter“ J invisible but mighty, and it combines a it r\iL a °re potentiality of causing total ruin with a
name for gentler habit of filling our sails and doing our work tor us. spirit, a synonym tor such a wind, might well be the principle of all action and of all motion. So conceived, it would be precisely that sustaining substance and connecting medium which is requisite to produce feelings consecutively and responsively to one another. It would be what I call the psyche, a reservoir and fountain for the re
distribution of energy in the material world, a centre of bodily organisation and action, and simultaneously an organ of sensation, passion, and thought. When people feel a power of origination and decision within them, so that, unless externally hindered, they are free to do whatever they will, undoubtedly they are not deceived. It is not the transforming power of the human heart and brain that any historian of earthly revolutions would be tempted to deny. Human energies have polished the earth’s surface and pullulate in it: and it is only too easy for random impulses and contagious phrases to carry mankind away, like sheep after a bellwether. But this guiding or organising or explosive force in animal life is not spirit in any spiritual sense. It is an obscure, complex, groping movement of the psyche, or of many psyches in con
tact: it is a perpetual readjustment of passionate habits in matter.