Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1870-06-01

But what is there in materialism which
g may paralyze the energies and destroy the
beauty of life?" Is it anything but a set
| tied habit of resolving that which is con-
! sciously felt to be highest and noblest into
identity with mean and unworthy antecedents
or concomitants The moment this is effec-
/ tuslly accomplished in any mind, the way is
! opened for the inroads of grossness, mOckery,
bitterness, and despair
Il no looked to Heaven, and tried to pray:
! But, or ever prayer had gushed,
! a wicked whisper came and made
! My heart as dry as dust
! This is the one uniform operation of the COM
pleted or advancing process, though mani
tested in thousand shapes.
Now, how long could mind be shut up
to the belief that all the varieties of thought
and feeling may be reduced t. mere varieties
of cOntTactIlities and nothing more How
long could a mind dwell in the absolute con-
victiOn that all the infinitely varying mani
/ testations OF life are due TO the inherent
properties of one and the same compound
substance composed of nitrogen. by drogen,
carbon, and oxygen, without feeling wonder
worship, dignity. and hope die cut OF MIN
I Do the best we haay with conceptions of vi
hratlons and oscillations, multiply and COM
btne degree, hs-r
upon their own limited plane, and involve no
possible resemblance To thought and feeling
Do the best we may with conceptions of what
we mean by oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and
nitrogen, we still rey0lve in the same narrow
circle of purely phys cal qualities. There is
and there can be in them no reminder of any
thing different from themselves By the very
necessities of our thoughts, they are an
tithetically opposed in aspect " to the con-
sciOus life within US. - Disconnected from
consciousness, cut off by It's limits. they are
thereby rendered foreign to it, T iey are
Forms of thought from which we specially
exclude any and everything outside of their
own limited definitions. To interpolate any,
thing further is to destroy their precision
and value. The oscillation of a mOlecule is
conceived by simply under the image of a
mote in agitation. Place this conception
side by side with a conscious feeling, and
the two can never be recognized as one
Nor does the one, of itself alone, ever tell US
anything of the other. Our knowledge Of
the conscious states of other minds is ever an
inference from conscious states of our own
minds. 1t is simply association of motions
and gestures of our own with certain phases
of personal feeling that makes similar motions
and gestures in others acquaIut us with their
feelings. There is no more identity between
motion and thought than between words and
thought, or between the TAPS OF the electric
Telegraph machine and thought. Contem-
Contemplated as signs. they are alike mean
ingless until they iaster attention on the
thing signifed.
A bias toward materialism at the bottom,
is manifested mainly in preference for a
meager and mean set of conceptions. in the
room of broad, breezy, inspiring thoughts of
the reason and affections of the heart. 1t
may grow alike out of passionate experiences
of blight, outrage, and failure, and of exclu-
sive devotion TO purely physical researches.
Its chilling and benumbing influence is al
ways due 10 one and the same fact, that it
keeps the soul away from living contact
with the only class of ideas that make it
soaring and exultant. And this is the ground
of the eternal protest in the human -rt
against identifying the two sets of concep-
tions as adequate representations of one an
other. They are not alike. They cannot be
made alike. They are further apart than
square and circle. To define the one is to
axsl.ads- -tA<-oi4--E And N noshiug Is a
bread, healthy 54imm mon--vn-o more La4asIsss !
than in a lightning-elear perception of the
impossible gulf that divides them.