Strictly speaking, there are three possible answers to this question, viz. that matter is the product of mind,
that mind is the product of matter, and that the two are independent. But the second, in this exact form, has probably never been maintained. Matter, being inact- ive, cannot be conceived as producing, unless it be first personified. Materialism, however, or regarding mind as a mode of matter, is a fair representative of this view. Setting this on one side, we come to the choice between the two other alternatives, that matter is the work of mind, and that it is coeternal with miud — between the- ism and dualism.
The Jewish and Christian religions are theistic : most other religions of any claim to depth or specidative value are dualistic. Attempts to import dualism into Chris- tianity have been numerous, but it has in every age been so obvious that the hybrid system was inconsist- ent— for if Christianity was a coherent system, its au- thorit,ative documents denounced dualism, and its in- stinctive consciousness rejected it — that it is unnecessary to reopen a question which is practically closed. All who claim to be, strictly speaking, theists, woidd now admit the prerogative of creation to belong to God in the fuUest sense. It will be enough here to classify the forms of dualism which have either been opposed to the theistic doctrine of Christianity, or which it has been sought to amalgamate with it, as they refer to the sub- ject before us, all of them being separately and fully noticed elsewhere. See Dualisji.
1. The Buddhistic dualism assumes two eternal and impersonal principles, matter and spirit. Finite and (eminently) human nature exists in virtue of the union or collision of the two; they are not only the good and evil, but the positive and negative elements of exist- ence : existence consists in partaking of both, as the Hegelian system makes it consist in the union of being and nothing. The victory of the human spirit is to be free from matter, and one with all pure spirit ; but since matter as well as spirit is necessary to existence, this pure being, though not conceived as nothingness, is uii- distinguishable from it.
2. The Manich»an dualism (to use the name of its most famous and permanently vital form, for a system not confined to the Manich<T?an sect, or those affiliated to it) assumes two eternal principles, matter and spirit, of which both are more or less <\.htmcX\y jjersonified. The strange and grotesque mythology by which the ]\Iani- chreans (in the stricter sense) accounted for tlie inter- mixture of good and evil in the world, may have been meant to be understood allegoricallj' ; but this is hardly Ukely — the allegory is too vivid to have been less than a myth, in the minds of its hearers, if not of its mvent- ors. Two powers which make war on each other, which devour and assimilate from each others' substance, or create and beget from their own, are strangely personal if regarded as abstractions : indeed, the best reason for thinking them so is that, if the ]\Ianicha?an cosmogony be taken literally, the eternal Spirit is wonderfully car- nal. But because a system is unphilosophical or incon- sistent, if understood in the natural way, it does not fol- low that it ought to be understood otherwise : there be- ing such things as inconsistent systems. It, however, is to be remembered that Manicha;anism always main- tained an esoteric doctrine, which viay have allegorized the known gross one.
3. The piatonic dualism (if one may take a title from a single enunciation of it — it does not appear to have been a consistent or permanent conviction with Plato) assumes an eternal personal Spirit, acting on an eternal imi)ersonal matter. Oiit of this he produces all things that are : not deriving them from his own being, lest he should impoverish himself, yet being in a real sense their author. Matter is conceived as negatively but not positively evil— unable to be made entirely good, even bj- the entirely good Spirit — and passively but not actively resisting his will.
4. The general character of Gnostic systems was not strictly dualistic. They assumed two eternal principles of spirit and matter, of which the first at least was con-
MATTER
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MATTHiEUS
ceived, more or less distinctly, as personal : but matter was made into liiiite beings, not by the action of the eternal Spirit, but of a created or generated one ; who, though not eternal, held a place so exalted as to be prac- tically a third God; and usurped, more or less, the bad eminence of the eternal matter, since, in opposition to orthodox Christians, it was necessary to distinguish him from the eternal Spirit, See Dejiiukge.
The most ancient form of dualism, the Persian, does not come in for consideration here, as its antitliesis is not between spirit and matter, but between light and dark- ness. Owing to its antiquity, the distinction between personal and impersonal principles is not formulated in it.
III. Has matter ever existed abstracted from those conditions of concrete form in which we meet with it '? The third and fourth of the forms of dualism just enu- merated make their cosmogony depend on the distinc- tion devised by Anaxagoras, and formulated by Aristo- tle, between matter and form. If matter be conceived as eternal, and yet a creation by a spiritual Being be in some sense admitted, this is necessary. If matter be believed to be itself the work of a Spirit, it is possible, but by no means necessary, still to believe that he first created matter, and then formed it. Such was, perhaps, the general view of the scholastic period in the widest sense of the term : the belief recognised absolute crea- tion by God out of nothing, while it left a meaning for the Aristotelian distinction which was fiimiliar. It seemed to derive direct support from the narrative of the creation in Gen. i, 2. But it is evident that the word " without form," in this passage, is not to be pressed in so strict a philosophical sense : if the mean- ing of the word were less general, it would stiU follow from the fact that the " formless" matter is already called (not the universe merely, but) " the earth." It there- fore follows that the scriptural or Christian doctrine of creation admits, but does not require, the complication of this intermediate step. It probably is ignored by al- most aU modern thought on the subject : in the last age of scholasticism. Sir Thomas Browne still continued to assume it, and his critic Digby thought it needless. — Blunt, Did. of Theol. s. v. See Creation.