Some Difficulties of Modern Materialism [pp. 344-372]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIE W.
in summoning them; but when thought as thought is sunm.
moned, it appears without any assignable ground, certainly
without any expenditure of energy. One very popular attempt
to escape this difficulty deserves mention, for it underlies all
materialistic theories at this point. Thought is said to be a
phenomenon of matter; and this formula is supposed to remove
all difficulty. Phenomena are not caused, but simply appear.
This suggestion does seem to help us a little until we remember
that a phenomenon implies not only something which appears,
but also a subject to which it appears. When, then, the
thought-side of matter is said to be phenomenal, the question
at once emerges, What is the subject and where the consciousness for which the phenomena exist? For the materialist there
is no such subject. Yet so natural is the thought of self that
we never divest ourselves of it even when denying it. When
the materialist views the brain as a thinking machine, he always...
tacitly assumes himself as a reading machine which reads off
the result. When we are told that nerve-motions have thoughts
for their inner face, a self is always supplied for whom the
thoughts exist. Materialistic statements tacitly assume back of
the organism which conducts the mental processes a looker-on
who tells off the processes and interprets their meaning. Thus
thought is said to be a sign of nervous processes; but for
whom does the sign exist? The outsider could not see the
thought, but only the nerve-movements. For whom, then, is
the thought a sign? For the thinking self, of course. Thus
the self which the materialist labors to destroy, peers complacently through the very arguments which are framed for its
destruction. Materialism succeeds in reducing the self to passivity so far as the physical world is concerned; but it remains
throughout a critical spectator of the on-going. But this is a
grave inconsistency. Materialism allows no self, and hence it
cannot make thought phenomenal. The thought-series cannot
be an appearance, for there is no one to whom it can appear.
It cannot be a sign or symbol in consciousness only, for there is
no one to read and interpret the sign, and consciousness itself
is nothing apart from the sign. Thinking, then, as such must
represent a real process in matter. But this also is contrary to
the hypothesis. Matter does not think, but moves. Some of
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