Properties of Matter by Dudley Marvin Canright

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 3, 1885

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 34

Properties of Matter.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

Is anything too hard for God? Is he not almighty? Certain persons limit the power of God, when they claim that matter cannot be organized by the Almighty so as to be able to think and reason. They take up a stone, they weigh it, measure it, and divide it, and then ask if that thing can think. Of course not. Examine that piece of wood. Can it think? Take a handful of the dust of the ground, from which all things grow—is there anything here able to think? They analyze a dead body, and find that it is made up chiefly of water, nitrogen, a little phosphorus, a little sulphur, and some lime, with a few other earthy materials. Go farther, and analyze a man's brain. It is found to be composed of eight-tenths water, with a little albumen, a little fat, phosphorus, sulphur, etc. Then they ask us if these elements can think. Can sulphur reason? Can water love? Can oxygen hate? No. Hence they conclude that no matter, in whatever form or organization, can be made to think. And, therefore, all intelligences, whether men, angels, or Deity, must be immaterial. So Heaven is fancied to be a vast region entirely void of matter. God who dwells there has no body, no form, no visible parts, but is a mere essence pervading all space. The angels are the same in essence, having no bodies, being nothing that can be felt, or handled or seen. The souls of men are the same also in kind, bodiless, intangible essences. All matter is incapable of thought, and all intelligence proceeds from immateriality. One more assumption, and the hard-labored conclusion is triumphantly reached; namely, Whatever is immaterial is undestructible and therefore immortal. Hence the thinking part of man is immortal.

But let us examine this pretentious fabric. If God is without body, parts, or shape, a mere essence filling all space, and if angels and the souls of men are the same, only smaller, then how can either be a person, or have a separate existence from the other? But waiving this, where is the proof that an immaterial being cannot be destroyed? Has God said so? No. Do they know it by experience? No. Then it is a mere groundless assumption. This theory of the immateriality of the soul is a modern invention to sustain the tottering notion of the soul's immortality. But the most noted theologians now confess that immateriality does not prove immortality. That which had a beginning can have an end. What God has made, he can destroy.

But to the question, Can God organize matter so that it can think? we answer, Yes. But our opponents say, “A stone, a stick, dust, water, iron,—these are material. They have no intelligence; hence matter cannot think.” True, matter in these particular forms cannot think; but it does not follow that it cannot in a different form, or when differently organized. A ball of snow is very white and very cold. It is material. Shall I therefore conclude that all matter must be white and cold? A piece of coal is just as material as the snow-ball; and yet it is very black, just opposite in color from the snow. Again, burning coal is very hot, just the opposite of the cold snow. Has it ceased to be material? Lift that block of lead. How very heavy! Now handle those feathers. How light! They seem to be just the opposite of each other, yet both are matter. One form of matter is sour, as a lemon; another is sweet, as sugar.

Indeed, the various combinations of matter may be said to be almost infinite. Yet it takes only a very few original or primary elements to make all these. “The number of the elements, or simple substances, with which we are at present acquainted, is sixty-four. These substances are not all equally distributed over the surface of the earth; most of them are exceedingly rare, and only known to chemists. Some ten or twelve only make up the great bulk, or mass, of all the objects we see around us.” But God has so variously arranged and organized these few elements that many forms seem the very opposite of others, as we have mentioned; as heat and cold, black and white, light and heavy, sour and sweet, and yet all are material.

It is objected that no combination or organization of material particles can give to matter any new qualities it did not possess before. But nature furnishes a thousand illustrations contradicting this statement. One of the characteristic properties of steam is its remarkable elasticity; but when it is condensed into water, this property of the matter almost entirely disappears, and is replaced by an exactly opposite property called incompressibility. So hardness and brilliancy are distinctive properties of the diamond, yet both these totally disappear when the gem is converted into a gas, though not a particle of the matter is lost. So a cold piece of steel is hard and brittle, but when heated, is soft and ductile. Here is a cold lump of lime. I pour upon it a quantity of cold water, and immediately both become extremely hot. Who has not seen two colorless liquids when poured together become of a bright color, as red or pink? A candle is burning in a room. I blow out the blaze, and all is total darkness. Have I destroyed a particle of that matter? No; yet I have destroyed the light which was a property of that matter in that condition. A change of condition in matter, then, does change its properties. So it is reasonable that by the organization of particles in the brain, thought may be produced when none of those particles separately could think.

I hold in my hand two kernels of corn. I plant one, and it has the property of appropriating to itself the particles of matter which surround it, and of building up a stalk of corn. The other kernel I break up fine, and carefully bury every particle of it together. Can it sprout? Can it grow? Will it now build up a stalk? No. Why? Simply because I have broken up the peculiar arrangement of its particles which gave it the property to do that. The particles are all there, but differently arranged. In crushing that kernel to meal did I drive out a living, immaterial spirit entity which now goes off to live somewhere else? No one claims such a thing. Organization, then, does give to matter qualities which it does not possess unorganized. Now take a higher organization,—a living man. He is thinking. A timber falls and crushes him to death. Can he think or reason now? No; and why not? That organization which gave him this attribute is destroyed, and hence thought ceases.

We utterly deny the distinction between matter and spirit which is claimed. We believe that everything is material, and that these diversities previously mentioned are only different conditions of matter. No man can successfully deny this. The wisest and most scientific men freely admit that they know but little about matter. The more they study, and the deeper they search into it, the more they are convinced that its different attributes and capabilities have been but partially understood. Because a certain fact is true of matter in one condition, it is argued that it must be true of matter always and everywhere. But this is illogical and false, for matter is capable of infinite diversity.

Matter in one form may even seem to be the opposite of the same matter in another form. For instance, I have before me a piece of ice. I put my hand upon it; it is exceedingly cold. It is a square block; I can cut it with a knife, or saw it with a saw into blocks. It is solid. But I put this ice into a vessel and warm it. It soon becomes water,—a liquid. It now looks very different from that piece of ice which I held in my hand a few minutes before. I closely confine this water in a tight vessel, and heat it very hot. It now becomes steam, a vapor, and is invisible. Says Mr. Wells, “Steam, which is the vapor of boiling water, is invisible, but when it comes in contact with air, which is cooler, it becomes condensed into small drops, and is thus rendered visible.” It is so hot it would burn your hand in a moment. It can neither be cut, nor poured from vessel to vessel. It now seems to be precisely the opposite from that piece of ice, and yet it is the very same material, only in another condition.

If a man had never seen ice thus converted into steam, he would pronounce such a change impossible. Let him examine a piece of ice, put his hands upon it, and then let him examine steam in its most heated condition; let him try it with his hand, then tell him that they are both the same material, and he would pronounce it the greatest absurdity imaginable. Yet we all know by actual observation that ice, and water, and steam are only different conditions of the same material.

There is apparently as great a difference between steam and ice as is claimed by our opponents between spirit and matter. We claim, therefore, that they cannot show that a spirit is not one form of matter.

So because matter in one form does not reason, it is no evidence that it cannot when organized in some other way. Look at that coarse, filthy mud in the road. That is matter. Shall we conclude that all matter is like that? How absurd! for here lies a beautiful gold watch, measuring off the seconds, minutes, and hours in exact time! The watch is as material as the mud, but how different! Again, there is a piece of black charcoal, hardly worth picking up. Here is a diamond of priceless value, one as large as a thimble being worth millions. Two small diamond ear-rings sold for $75,000. One diamond owned by Napoleon was worth $1,000,000. The king of Portugal has one worth $28,000,000. Now, that charcoal and that diamond are not only both material, but, wonderful to tell, they are both of exactly the same material, only differently arranged. The contrast between senseless matter and thinking matter would not be greater. D. M. CANRIGHT.