"But, Padre, is the picture of the chair carried on the nerve to the brain?"
"Oh, no, _chiquita_, only vibrations. It is as if the nerve moved just a little distance, but very, very fast, back and forth, or up and down."
"And no picture is carried to the brain?"
"No, there is just a vibration in the brain."
"And that vibration makes us see the chair?"
"Yes, little one."
A moment of silence. Then--
"Padre dear, I don"t believe it."
"Why, _chiquita_!"
"Well, Padre, what is it that sees the chair, anyway?"
"The mind, dear."
"Is the mind up there in the brain?"
"Well--no, we can"t say that it is."
"Where is it, then?"
"A--a--well, no place in particular--that is, it is right here all the time."
"Well, then, when the mind wants to see the chair does it have to climb up into the brain and watch that little nerve wiggle?"
The man was at a loss for an answer. Carmen suddenly crumpled the sketch in her small hand and smiled up at him.
"Padre dear, I don"t believe our outside eyes see anything. We just think they do, don"t we?"
Jose looked out through the open door. Carmen"s weird heron was stalking in immense dignity past the house.
"I think Cantar-las-horas is getting ready to sing the Vespers, _chiquita_. And so Dona Maria probably needs you now. We will talk more about the eye to-morrow."
By the light of his sputtering candle that night Jose sat with elbows propped on the table, his head clasped in his hands, and a sketch of the human eye before him. In his confident attempt to explain to Carmen the process of cognition he had been completely baffled.
Certainly, light coming from an object enters the eye and casts a picture upon the retina. He had often seen the photographic camera exhibit the same phenomenon. The law of the impenetrability of matter had to be set aside, of course--or else light must be pure vibration, without a material vibrating concomitant. Then, too, it was plain that the light in some way communicated its vibration to the little projecting ends of the optic nerve, which lie spread out over the rear inner surface of the eye. And equally patent that this vibration is in some way taken up by the optic nerve and transmitted to the center of sight in the brain. But after that--what? He laughed again at Carmen"s pertinent question about the mind climbing up into the brain to see the vibrating nerve. But was it so silly a presumption, after all? Is the mind within the brain, awaiting in Stygian darkness the advent of the vibrations which shall give it pictures of the outside world? Or is the mind outside of the brain, but still slavishly forced to look at these vibrations of the optic nerve and then translate them into terms of things without? What could a vibrating nerve suggest to a well-ordered mind, anyway? He might as logically wave a piece of meat and expect thereby to see a world! He laughed aloud at the thought.
Why does not the foolish mind leave the brain and look at the picture on the retina? Or why does it not throw off its shackles and look directly at the object to be cognized, instead of submitting to dependence upon so frail a thing as fleshly eyes and nerves?
As he mused and sketched, unmindful of the voracious mosquitoes or the blundering moths that momentarily threatened his light, it dawned slowly upon him that the mind"s awareness of material objects could not possibly depend upon the vibrations of pieces of nerve tissue, so minute as to be almost invisible to the unaided sight. Still more absurd did it appear to him that his own mind, of which he might justly boast tremendous powers, could be prost.i.tuted to such a degree that its knowledge of things must be served to it on waving pieces of flesh.
And how about the other senses--touch, hearing? Did the ear hear, or the hand feel? He had always accepted the general belief that man is dependent absolutely upon the five physical senses for his knowledge of an outside world. And now a little thought showed that from these five senses man could not possibly receive anything more than a series of disconnected vibrations! And, going a step further, anything that the mind infers from these vibrations is unquestionably inferred _without a particle of outside authority_!
He rose and paced the floor. A tremendous idea seemed to be knocking at the portal of his mentality.
What can the mind know? a.s.suredly nothing but the contents of itself.
But the contents of mind are thoughts, ideas, mental things. Do solid material objects enter the mind? Certainly not! Then the mind knows not things, but its _thoughts of things_. And instead of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling solid material objects, the mind sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels--what? The contents of itself! Its own thoughts and ideas! And the outer world? Is only what the mind _believes_ it to be. But surely his mind saw an outer world through the medium of his eye! No. His mind saw only its own concepts of an outer world--and these concepts, being mental, might take on whatever hue and tinge his mind decreed. In other words, instead of seeing a world of matter, he was seeing only a mental picture of a world. And that picture was in his own mind, _and formed by that mind_!
The man seized his hat and hurried out into the night. He walked rapidly the full length of the town. His mind was wrestling with stupendous thoughts.
An hour later he returned to his house, and seizing a pencil, wrote rapidly: Matter is mental. We do not see or feel matter, but we _think_ it. It is formed and held as a mental concept in every human mind. The material universe is but the human mind"s concept of a universe, and can only be this mentality"s translation to itself of infinite Mind"s purely mental Creation.
"And so," he commented aloud, sitting back and regarding his writing, "all my miserable life I have been seeing only my own thoughts! And I have let them use me and color my whole outlook!"
He extinguished the candle and threw himself, fully dressed, upon his bed.
CHAPTER 10
Momentous changes, of far-reaching effect, had come swiftly upon Jose de Rincon during the last few days, changes which were destined after much vacillation and great mental struggle to leave a reversed outlook. But let no one think these changes fortuitous or casual, the chance result of a new throw of Fate"s dice. Jose, seeing them dimly outlined, did not so regard them, but rather looked upon them as the working of great mental laws, still unknown, whose c.u.mulative effect had begun a transformation in his soul. How often in his seminary days he had pondered the scripture, "He left not Himself without witness."
How often he had tried to see the hopeless confusion of good and evil in the world about him as a witness to the One who is of purer eyes than to behold evil. And he had at last abandoned his efforts in despair. Yet that there must be something behind the complex phenomena which men call life, he knew. Call it what he would--law, force, mind, G.o.d, or even X, the great unknown quant.i.ty for which life"s intricate equations must be solved--yet _something_ there was in it all which endured in an eternal manifestation. But could that something endure in an expression both good and evil?
He had long since abandoned all study of the Bible. But in these last days there had begun to dawn upon him the conviction that within that strange book were locked mysteries which far transcended the wildest imaginings of the human mind. With it came also the certainty that Jesus had been in complete possession of those sacred mysteries. There could be no question now that his mission had been woefully misunderstood, often deliberately misinterpreted, and too frequently maliciously misused by mankind. His greatest sayings, teachings so pregnant with truth that, had they been rightfully appropriated by men, ere this would have dematerialized the universe and revealed the spiritual kingdom of G.o.d, had been warped by cunning minds into crude systems of theology and righteous shams, behind which the world"s money-changers and sellers of doves still drove their wicked traffic and offered insults to Truth in the temple of the Most High.
Oh, how he now lamented the narrowness and the intellectual limitations with which his seminary training had been hedged about!
The world"s thought had been a closed book to him. Because of his morbid honesty, only such pages reached his eye as had pa.s.sed the bigoted censorship of Holy Church. His religious instruction had been served to him with the seal of infallible authority. Of other systems of theology he had been permitted only the Vatican"s biased interpretation, for the curse of Holy Church rested upon them. Of current philosophical thought, of Bible criticism and the results of independent scriptural research, he knew practically nothing--little beyond what the explorer had told him in their memorable talks a few weeks before in Cartagena. But, had he known it, these had unbarred the portals of his mind to the reception of the new ideas which, under a most powerful stimulus, were now flowing so steadily through them.
That stimulus was Carmen.
To meet with a child of tender years who knows no evil is, after all, a not uncommon thing. For, did we but realize it, the world abounds in them. They are its glory, its radiance--until they are taught to heed the hiss of the serpent. Their pure knowledge of immanent good would endure--ah, who may say how long?--did not we who measure our wisdom by years forbid them with the fear-born mandate: "Thus far!" What manner of being was he who said, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not?" Oh, ye parents, who forbid your little ones to come to the Christ by hourly heaping up before them the limitations of fear and doubt, of faith in the power and reality of sin and evil, of false instruction, and withering material beliefs! Would not the Christ pray for you to-day, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"?
When Jose met Carmen she was holding steadfastly to her vision--the immanence and allness of G.o.d. Each day she created the morrow; and she knew to a certainty that it would be happy. Would he, clanking his fetters of worldly beliefs, be the one to shatter her illusion, if illusion it be? Nay, rather should he seek to learn of her, if; haply she be in possession of that jewel for which he had searched a vain lifetime. Already from the stimulus which his intercourse with the child had given his mental processes there had come a sudden liberation of thought. Into his freer mentality the Christ-idea now flowed.
Mankind complain that they cannot "prove" G.o.d. But Paul long since declared emphatically that to prove Him the human mind must be transformed. In the light of the great ideas which had dawned upon him in the past few days--the nature of G.o.d as mind, unlimited, immanent, eternal, and good; and the specious character of the five physical senses, which from the beginning have deluded mankind into the false belief that through them comes a true knowledge of the cosmos--Jose"s mentality was being formed anew.
Hegel, delving for truth in a world of illusion, summed up a lifetime of patient research in the pregnant statement, "The true knowledge of G.o.d begins when we know that things as they are have no truth in them." The testimony of the five physical senses const.i.tutes "things as they are." But--if Jose"s reasoning be not illogical--the human mind receives no testimony from these senses, which, at most, can offer but insensate and meaningless vibrations in a pulpy ma.s.s called the brain. The true knowledge of G.o.d, for which Jose had yearned and striven, begins only when men turn from the mesmeric deception of the physical senses, and learn that there is something, knowable and usable, behind them, and of whose existence they give not the slightest intimation.
It was Sat.u.r.day. The church edifice was so far put in order that Jose found no reason for not holding service on the morrow. He therefore announced the fact, and told Carmen that he must devote the day to preparation. Their lessons must go over to Monday. Seeking the solitude of his house, Jose returned to his Bible.
He began with Genesis. "In the beginning--G.o.d." Not, as in the codes of men, G.o.d last, and after every material expedient has been exhausted--but "to begin with." Jose could not deny that for all that exists there is a cause. Nor can the human mind object to the implication that the cause of an existing universe must itself continue to exist. Even less can it deny that the framer of the worlds, bound together in infinite s.p.a.ce by the unbreakable cables of infinite laws, must be omnipotent. And to retain its omnipotence, that cause must be perfect--absolutely good--every whit pure, sound, and harmonious; for evil is demonstrably self-destructive. And, lastly, what power could operate thus but an infinite intelligence, an all-inclusive mind?
Now let the human mentality continue its own reasoning, if so be that it hold fast to fact and employ logical processes. If "like produces like"--and from thistles figs do not grow--that which mind creates must be mental. And a good cause can produce only a good effect. So the ancient writer, "And G.o.d saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." The inspired scribe--inspired?
Yes, mused Jose, for inspiration is but the flow of truth into one"s mentality--stopped not until he had said, "So G.o.d created man in His own image"--
Wait! He will drive that home.
--"in the image of G.o.d"--not in the image of matter, not in the likeness of evil--"created He him." But what had now become of that man?
So Jesus, centuries later, "G.o.d is spirit," and, "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Or, man--true man--expresses mind, G.o.d, and is His eternal and spiritual likeness and reflection. But, to make this still clearer to torpid minds, Paul wrote, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being." Then he added, "To be spiritually minded is life." As if he would say, True life is the _consciousness_ of spiritual things only.
Is human life aught but a series of states of consciousness? And is consciousness aught but mental activity?--for when the mind"s activity ceases, the man dies. But mental activity is the activity of thought.