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286 XII. The Material and the Ideal T he subject dealt with in this chapter is closely connected with the theme of the last chapter. In one respect, the contrast and opposition embodied in the title of the present chapter was the source of the early or Greek formulation of antithesis of the theoretical and the practical. For the primacy of the former in Greek philosophy was essentially moral; the superiority of that which is theoretical by nature is one of intrinsic value. The human being is shaped by that with which he occupies himself; with which he is characteristically concerned. In pure knowing the soul is occupied with things which are intrinsically higher, even to the point of being divine. In dealing with objects having no material taint, the mind is purged of the grossness, the coarseness, which inevitably results when it is occupied with what is material, since the latter is guided by appetite and has its origin in appetite and is directed to satisfaction of bodily needs. Food, drink, and sex-relations are the immediate objects of appetite. Acquisition of goods and money as the means of their acquisition are its indirect objects. Desire may be manifested in the field of human, that is, civic relations, and in that case has a higher object: Reputation. But such an object and the activities by which it is attained, even when of the nature of good citizenship and loyal defense of one’s city, at the expense of life itself, are contingent and transient in comparison with the necessary and eternal objects of pure knowledge. These latter objects are purely ideal or rational, and in the process of knowing them the rational potentialities of mind are actualized. In this actualization the knowing mind takes on the qualities of that which is known and becomes in so far divine, enjoying bliss without alloy. I do not see how “matter” and “material” could have acquired the disparaging and quasi-degraded signification that has attached to them except on the ground of the belief that they are completely severed from all “high” and intrinsically worthy objects and activities. Cosmological and metaphysical theories, which have systematically disparaged “matter,” turn out, when looked at in this context, to be the results of converting alleged moral differences, difference of value, into properties of the very structure The Material and the Ideal | 287 of the universe. Medieval Christian philosophy marks, in a way, a frank acknowledgement of this interpretation of Nature in its material aspect and constituents. For holding, as Greek thought did not hold, the world to be the creation of an all-wise, all-powerful and all-righteous spiritual Being, it could account for the gross, unmoral and anti-moral tendencies of outer and inner nature only on the ground of a corruption wrought by an evil act of human will. I have already pointed out that on the basis of a naturalistic interpretation of known facts, the word “matter” as a general term has no standing of its own in philosophy. In natural science it has a definite meaning, associated with the need for a symbol to stand for qualities of events of the order of mass and inertia. It is obviously absurd to attribute any value-predicates, eulogistic or the reverse, to “matter” in this meaning. It simply stands for something in natural events it is found necessary to take note of in every physico-mathematical formulation. The fact that “spiritually” minded persons greeted with acclaim the false rumor that modern physics has entirely resolved “matter” into energy, merely proves the cultural hold upon belief possessed by direct projection of moral valuations into the total constitution of nature. For the word “spiritually-minded” as here used means those whose beliefs about the world have been determined by the medieval theologian version of Greek cosmology. As was said earlier in another connection, in philosophy the word “matter ” may be legitimately used to designate the sum-total set of natural events that condition whatever occurs in human experience. The word, although a term so general as to be abstract, is legitimate in this usage as long as the view prevails that human experience, as a whole or in specific parts, has no conditions or that it is “caused” by a non-natural physical or spiritual special force. In this usage, it is a term of general protest against a type of belief which is general in the sense of being widespread and influential. In...

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