The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

England, denying at one extreme the very existence of matter, and the
materialism of part of Europe and America insisting, at the other extreme,
that nothing exists but matter. A third tendency, represented in Locke and
his school, throws a bridge by which men can pass over to the first or the
second, by making the world of the senses the only world of cognition, and
by maintaining that there is nothing in the nature of things, nothing in the
nature of matter or of thought, to prevent matter from being endowed with
the power of thought and feeling. But this is in effect to obliterate the
essential distinction between spirit and matter. If matter can be endowed
with the property of thinking, it can be endowed with all the other
properties of mind; that is, mind can be matter, matter can be mind; but if
the finite mind can be finite matter, the infinite mind can be infinite matter,
and we reach a materialistic pantheism. The skeptical school of Locke
itself being judge, we can, from the limitations usually belonging to matter,
draw no inference against the presence of the body of Christ in the Supper.
Hamilton.
While we repudiate all these extremes of speculation, we yet see in
them that the human mind is unable to settle what are the precise
limitations imposed by the nature of things on matter and spirit, or to say
how much or how little of what is commonly considered the exclusive
property of the one God may be pleased to give to the other. Sir William
Hamilton says, "It has been commonly confessed that, as substances, we
know not what is matter, and are ignorant of what is mind." 527
"Consciousness in its last analysis...is a faith." "Reason itself must rest at
last upon authority; for the. original data of reason do not rest on reason,
but are necessarily accepted by reason on the authority of what is beyond
itself. These data are, therefore, in rigid propriety, belief or trust. Thus it is
that in the last resort we must, perforce, philosophically admit that belief is
the primary condition of reason, and not reason the ultimate ground of
belief. We are compelled to surrender the proud Intellige ut Credas of
Abelard, to content ourselves with the humble Crede ut intelligas of
Anselm." "We do not in propriety know that what we are
527 Discussions. Appendix.