Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/271

Letter 23] mean by "I"? Tell us what "I" is. And how can the desperate logician set about telling us what "I" is, without assuming that his own "I" is, which is equivalent to assuming "I am"? Surely this is altogether a hopeless muddle, and we ought to give up reasoning about "I" and "am;" yes, and I would add not only about "I" and "am," but also about a number of other fundamental conceptions, which are far more profitably assumed as axioms. For my part, whenever I use the words "mind," "matter," "substance," "spirit," "soul" "intellect," and the like, and make any serious statement about them, I hardly ever do so without a mental reservation, saying to myself—"but of course there may be no such things precisely as these, but some other things quite different, producing the results which we ascribe to these; so that all these statements may be only proportionately true."

I do not object to the use of the materialistic language where it is recognized as metaphor by those who use and those who hear it; but the mischief is that it is often not so recognized. Once make yourself the slave of the popular language about "spirit," and "substance," and what not—and you are in danger of being manacled intellectually as well as theologically. The popular belief is that a man's spirit is inside him, like his qualities; the latter like peas in a box, the former like gas in a bladder. Drive a hole through a man's left side or the middle of his head, and—out goes the spirit; that is the common materialistic creed. Now I have a strong desire to declare that this creed is ridiculously false. But I will be consistent and simply say that I know nothing whatever about it. My spirit may possibly be inside me; but it may possibly be outside me; say at a point six feet, or six miles, above me; or away in Jupiter, or Saturn, or down at the earth's centre; or it may be incapable of occupying space. What does it matter to