CONTEMPORARY physicists, psychologists, and philosophers are practically unanimous in the opinion that matter is not an entity but an objective image of thought, the response of consciousness to the stimulus of certain invisible agencies; that color, resistance, and other phenomenal peculiarities are not qualities inherent in objects themselves, but are phases of sensation induced in consciousness by forces conceived of as operating from without. Even according to the findings of so-called natural science we do not and cannot become acquainted with these forces or agencies apart from their effects as observed through the medium of physical sensation. The significance of the impressions thus received is determined, moreover, in each case by the quality and degree of discernment manifested in the receptive consciousness. The brute, the imbecile, and the seer may all witness the same phenomenon, but it is fraught with meanings that vary respectively according to the status of the interpreter.
Although dealing with the universe objectively as matter, the physicist recognizes the non-physical basis of the phenomena which he describes as physical. So far his observations tend to corroborate the statements advanced nearly half a century ago by the Discoverer of Christian Science, to the effect that matter is the manifestation of material so-called mentality. But research along the line of material indications can never, from the very conditions of the case, lead to a solution of the problem of the nature and origin of the universe. Herbert Spencer declares, "We cannot think of substance save in terms that imply material properties." What, then, are "material properties"? Extension and inertia are palpably of this class; or, to put it more exactly, they are essential requisites of material manifestation.
Material phenomena may be said to represent the objective correspondence of a quality or type of consciousness which conceives of substance in terms of extension, inertia, and other descriptive attributes; they stand in the relation, as it were, of an answering echo to material thought. Material sense can conceive of substance in no other fashion, can recognize objectively only such qualities and conditions as are akin to its own potential states. Extension implies local and dimensional considerations, spatial relations. The root of materiality and its objective representation—matter—lies in the belief that substance is divisible, that the universe consists of a multiplicity of detached, distinct individuals, monads, atoms, or what not; in other words, the belief that substance or mentality can be partitioned off. portioned out, measured by finite standards, sifted through finite modes. Theologians and philosophers have pretty generally adhered to the theory that the great First Cause (whether that cause be conceived to exist in one form or another) acts through finite mediums and according to material modes; that the Supreme Being is immanent in a world of material forms.
