ever dealt with by the
physicist and chemist. This is very interesting, because it shows that
the authors of such ideas feel vaguely that it is wrong to think of
thought as if it were matter, but being unable to think of it in any
other way, owing to man's ingrained materialism, they seek to palliate
their sin by making it thin matter. Of course this is just as absurd
as the excuse made by the mother of an illegitimate child, that it was
a very small one. This thin matter is just as material as lead or
brass. And such systems are purely materialistic. But they illustrate
the extraordinary difficulty that the ordinary mind experiences in
attempting to rise from sensuous to non-sensuous thinking. They
illustrate the ingrained materialism of man.

This natural human materialism is also the cause {12} of mysticism and
symbolism. A symbolic thought necessarily contains two terms, the
symbol and the reality which it symbolizes. The symbol is always a
sensuous or material object, or the mental image of such an object,
and the reality is always something non-sensuous. Because the human
mind finds it such an incredible struggle to think non-sensuously, it
seeks to help itself by symbols. It takes a material thing and makes
it stand for the non-material thing which it is too weak to grasp.
Thus we talk of God as the "light of lights." No doubt this is a very
natural expression of the religious consciousness, and it has its
meaning. But it is not the naked truth. Light is a physical existence,
and God is no more light than he is heat or electricity. People talk
of symbolism as if it were a very high and exalted thing. They say,
"What a wonderful piece of symbolism!" But, in truth symbolism is the
mark of an infirm mind. It is the measure of our weakness and not of
our strength. Its root is in materialism, and it is produced and
propagated by those who are unable to rise above a materialistic
level.

Now philosophy is essentially the attempt to get beyond this sort of
symbolic and mystical thinking, to get at the naked truth, to grasp
what lies behind the symbol as it is in itself. These inferior modes
of thought are a help to those who are themselves below their level,
but are a hindrance to those who seek to reach the highest level of
truth.

It is often said that philosophy is a very difficult and abstruse
subject. Its difficulty lies almost wholly in the struggle to think
non-sensuously. Whenever we {13} come to anything in