BIFOLD PROCESS OF CAUSATION.

17

(or as the word in its participle denotes "Being ") consists of three co-existences, or plurality of persons, who have jointly produced indefinite multiplicity by their mutual co-operation, is really nothing but a profitless reiteration of a barren and thread-bare abstraction, which is impuissant to generate any logical idea in the mind.

Socrates suggested that the enquiry should be thus prosecuted. First of all find unity, in that find duality, (not a trinity,) then the trinity after the duality, in each triad find the fourth, and so proceed until the original unity is seen to possess unity, duality, trinity, and then indefinite plurality. Thus it follows that multiplicity is countable in triads resulting from a causative duality generating the third, and so conjugating plurality in logical sequence of time and space, indicated by number, tense, and mood; substantives, and attributes, or adjectives, then fall in due order. The Greeks were not content with singular and plural, indicating unity and indefinite multiplicity; they found a great duality the cementing link throughout nature, and they required a definite plurality between "I am one" and "We are many;" unity by itself cannot beget any conception of relation to plurality without the conjugation of duality; thus "I am" is related to "thou art," just as "we are" is with "you are," by the definite dual link that is required to conjoin infinite unity with infinite indefinite plurality. Unity cannot conjugate by itself, there must be two entities to set up conjunction. Unity cannot divide itself into plurality of indefinite multiplicity without some conjunctive process of cause and effect.

If it is an error to skip from "I am to "He is," leaving out the second person singular, equally is it wrong to skip from infinite unity to indefinite plurality, without first acknowledging the existence of definite duality between "I am," and "We are." We two are one, is neither positively singular, nor is it absolutely plural, it is both singular and plural in its dual link, for it indicates that unity is in duality, as much as duality exists in unity, that is to say, it is unity of relationship, the two absolutes are to be conceived only as

с

one, only as they are related, not as they exist separable units.

Every personality, number, mood, tense, participle of the word or verb to be, is known only as related to the primary self-existent duality of I AM. And there is no conceivable relationship existing between the self-existing I am, and infinite multiplicity of personality in this being, except by generation; that is, except as mutually related to the primary duality of parental unity; the absolute and unconditioned entities being revealed as self-existent only in their relationship to the phenomenal existence of their offspring.

ena.

Sacerdotal theism is that crude and effete system of immaterialism, which has, under the attractive banner of spiritualism, enlisted so many champions. This theism of preter-naturalism has animated the universe with a mind analagous to that of its own capricious character, and is blind to the glaring contradictions involved in the elimination of necessary sequence, from the domain of mental phenomThe theory of one solitary First Cause, akin to human intelligence, overthrows by inference the primary axioms in natural philosophy; where like causes produce like effects, and substitutes miraculous interpositions called creations, having relation to nothing but the mind's own assumptions of lawlessness, called free will. Science, or cosmism, maintains that cause in its absolute sense is BIFOLD, and that natural processes of cause and effect are not results of creations out of nothing by the action of one great solitary existence. In support of this argument, as to the existence of bifold causation, it is contended that the whole of existence, or that immaterial and material universe comprehended under the popular phrase of everything, is not an effect of preceding cause, because it generates the concept of its being an uncaused and uncreated entity, in so far as that concept of existence involves the idea of no other PRECEDING existence. Moreover, this material and immaterial universe conveys irresistibly the concept of unlimited existence, and thus it is that the whole universe is maintained to be a great eternal, uncaused, and uncreated existence, the concept of which per

TWO UNCONDITIONED ENTITIES IN EXISTENCE. 19

se precludes the possibility of any preceding existence, and because self-existent and eternal, it must be unlimited, both in respect of time and also of space.

But notwithstanding this fact that the universe has generated the concept in the human mind of it being an unlimited material existence, shutting out the possibility of any preceding existence to create, construct, or design matter out of nothing, such concept of the eternity, and infinitude of material existence does not necessarily exclude the possibility and probability of another great entity, equally co-eternal, and self-existent, which the material duality may serve to veil, or only negatively to reveal.

It must be conceded that the material universe is only relatively known; for by the imponderable forces of matter only is its self-existence revealed; and thus everything is revealed under conditions, that is, everything can only be known conditionally, as phenomenally related to causation that cannot be absolutely, that is, unconditionally known; for causation is not of one, but of two self-existences, which have in their primary, uncaused, and unconditioned states, no power separately to affect human consciousness, nor to beget separately any concept therein, because only by their dual relationship has the universe of nature been generated, and that which has been for ever united, mind cannot arbitrarily and wantonly divorce.

Imponderable electro-magnetic force is by matter negatively revealed, as an uncaused, infinite self-existence per se, which involves the concept of no other preceding existence; but it is not necessarily such an entity as implies the impossibility of another uncaused and unlimited entity such as matter, which is, in its turn, equally negatively shewn by imponderable force to be eternal per se, shutting out the possibility of any preceding entity to have caused, created, or designed it.

Neither of these two great self-existing entities could have preceded, or created, or caused the other, for together they beget the concept of both, being equally unlimited, equally self-existent in themselves, and thus, as eternal and infinite, possessing sufficient cause in its absolute sense to generate

by their union, that never ceasing stream of the necessary sequence of cause and effect manifested in the uniform operation of natural processes.

Concept of idea in mind is the reflex action of a gestating process, and this is not the operation of one, but of two eternal entities, that have, by their duality, begotten such concept, to be born in the lapse of predestined time.

All force acts in time; and therefore is deduced the axiom that time determines the form, or mode, or disposition of all force; but this time is as much material as it is immaterial, for imponderable force, per se, remains eternal for ever, and so does matter remain untimed. Thus, neither one nor the other could, separately or unconditionally, have generated time, or temporal and relative phenomena.

Imponderable force can only affect mind through the medium of material existence; and, on the other hand, material existence can only affect mind by its relation to imponderable force.

Imponderable force has per se nothing in common with matter per se, for mutually they generate the conception of their being equally absolutely self-existent, shutting out the possibility of any preceding existence; no entity could possibly create another entity out of itself, possessing nothing in common with it; neither could it have fabricated it out of nothing, to occupy space, when there was nothing to take from, or space to be filled up.

There can be no such solitary first cause in the absolute sense that the immaterial metaphysician claims for it, for all cause is bifold in character, and cause, absolutely conceived, must be the action of one eternal self-existence on another, generating timed or phenomenal causation, which is a stream or flux of processes analagous to gestation, operating in that unceasing change of conditions known as "allotropism," where the same material is recognized under totally different characteristics, substances disappearing and re-appearing again under the most extensively diversified forms.

Something is self-existing per se in its very nature. Is it matter? If it is, under what form, quality, or mode of that

KNOWLEDGE LIMITED TO CONDITIONED ENTITIES. 21

self-existence can it be seized and absolutely known? It is impossible to obtain such absolute knowledge, because the form and disposition of material existence is incessantly changed by time. Time itself is made, that is begotten, by the action of eternal force on eternal matter, and the offspring of these two eternal entities is one material personality or the time-born.

If matter per se cannot be recognized, neither can the other eternal immaterial force be absolutely known, neither can one nor other in its separate states affect human consciousness. Separately, they cannot beget any concept in the human mind, for generation of mind is as much the result or effect of a united and bifold cause, as is the production of the rest of natural phenomena. Mind is only part and parcel of natural processes, and not an entity in an absolute and self-existent condition.

The direct action of a purely spiritual or immaterial cause is outside of all ordained conditions of existence, and cannot affect mind in any way until it has been conceived in a material ovum. The purely spiritual is the purely super and preter-natural, and this is the abstract speculative dream of that effete metaphysical system which confuses science by persisting in animating the universe with a postulated First Cause resembling the human mind, dogmatically assumed to be absolutely immaterial, because its necessary dependence upon a material organization destroys that hypothesis of its immaterial immortality which sacerdotalism thrives upon.

The science of immortality must be constructed by digging a sure foundation in the ground of rational and material evidence. Existence must have a material as well as an immaterial parental cause; its conditions must be within the flux of that stream of generative vitality that pulsates from the great bifold cause of two eternal selfexistences, without whose union there is no action what

ever.

Without a material organization there is no individuality. Separate or divorce the imponderable from the purely material, and the primary parents remain eternally existent;