The 'Shepherd'
plainly tells us mind is a _primary_ and matter a _secondary_ existence.
Having conjured up an Universal Mind God, it was natural he should try
to establish the supremacy of mind--but though a skilful logician he
will be unable to do so. Experience is against him. On experience of
natural operations Materialists base their conclusion that matter
without mind is possible, and mind without matter is impossible. It has
been proved that even the modification of mind called imagination is
indebted for all its images, yea, for its very existence as imagination,
to the material world.
D'Alembert states in the Discourse prefixed to the French Encyclopaedia
that 'the objects about which our minds are occupied are either
spiritual or material, and the media employed for this purpose are our
ideas either directly received or derived from reflection'--which
reflection he tells us 'is of two kinds, according as it is employed in
reasoning on the objects of our direct ideas, or in studying them as
models for imitation.' And then he tells us 'the imagination is a
creative faculty, and the mind, before it attempts to create, begins by
reasoning upon what it sees and knows.
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