Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/695

 chain of material phenomena, with its several series of causes and effects, is never broken; no physical cause is without its adequate physical effect, nor is any physical effect without a physical cause sufficient to produce it. The body is to the mind an external, material phenomena; closely connected indeed with mental states, and always more or less present to consciousness, but no part of our true selves, no necessary element in our conception of what we actually are. Every portion of the bodily frame can be regarded by us as an outward object, wholly independent of ourselves, and logically, if not practically, separable from ourselves. Many portions, such as the limbs, are actually so separable; and all of them are separable in thought.

Still more impassable is this chasm in nature seen to be when we remark, that there are two all-pervading elements in which mind and matter have their being, and that the phenomena within each element have definite relations to other phenomena within the same element, but are incapable of being brought into a like relation with those of the other element. These two elements are Space and Time. Material particles are related to one another in space, and in space alone. They are nearer to, or more distant from, above or below, to the north, south, east, or west of, the other material particles with which we compare them. But they are not earlier or later than other particles. The existence of concrete objects may be earlier or later than that of other concrete objects; but when we talk of their existence as earlier or later, we are talking of their relation to consciousness, not of their relation to one another. It is the total framed and classified by the mind that has a relation in time to some other similar total; each total, analyzed into its ultimate atoms, has only relations in space to the other total, likewise analyzed into its ultimate atoms. Contrariwise, mental objects, or states of consciousness, are related to one another in time, and in time alone. States of consciousness can be compared as earlier or later, simultaneous or successive. They have no space-relations either to one another or to the material world. It is common indeed to consider the mind as located in the body, but this is incorrect. For absolutely nothing is meant by saying that anything is in a given place except that it stands