THE WORL D VERSUS MA TTER 2 7 7 



Lucretius and the Greeks, in observing universal mutation and the vanity of 

 life, conceived behind appearance a great intelligible process, an evolution in 

 nature. 



This process was conceived to have its seat in a single homogeneous 

 substance which was material rather than metaphysical ; that is, in brief, 

 was matter. The point to be particularly noted is that such a substance 

 must be behind appearance; it must be a " hidden background " ; it must 

 be invisible. In other words the real world must be an invisible world. 

 The obvious reason for this was that the visible world seemed too transi- 

 tory and insignificant, and as regards men, too evil and worthless to 

 satisfy the deeper longings of the poet's emotional nature. 



Modern materialism has undoubtedly taken on a quite different 

 motive from that which gave it birth, for no one would contend for a 

 moment that the materialistic conception of the world in our day is 

 primarily poetic. Its design is unquestionably rational and logical 

 rather than emotional. Viewed historically this poetic motive of mate- 

 rialism has never met the needs in a large and general way, of the 

 emotional side of human nature. The great epochal outbursts of poetic 

 genius throughout the ages have been in one form or another quite the 

 opposite of materialistic. The Dantes and Petrarchs, and Chancers and 

 Spensers, the Miltons and Shakespeares, and Goethes and Brownings, 

 have been men with a strongly ideal or spiritual quality. The poets who 

 by touching the hearts of men mightily have become their universal 

 spokesmen have been of very different mould from Lucretius. Taking 

 the facts which history actually presents to us, materialism as a poetic 

 and philosophic motive has not been superlatively great; it has not met. 

 the deeper needs of the race. 



What we now have to consider is whether modernized, that is to say 

 rationalized, materialism is more successful. You will recall my earlier 

 statement that science, like other fields of human endeavor, is rarely if 

 ever capable of self-criticism to the extent of recasting, with no impetus 

 from the outside, fundamental defects and errors into which it may 

 have fallen. I believe science is now face to face with interests and 

 demands from other quarters than its own that will compel a self- 

 examination of its fundamental processes and conceptions, and then a 

 recognition of what is in reality untenable in its materialistic theory of 

 the world. This pressure, one hardly needs to point out, is being 

 brought to bear from the sides of psychology, philosophy, religion and 

 sociology. Summing up the whole situation, no candid observer can 

 fail to acknowledge that the materialistic tendencies of the last twenty- 

 five or fifty years have had something unmistakably brutish about them 

 as regards the affairs of men. The doctrine of survival of the fittest has 

 surely been of this character, and the so-called economic interpretation 

 of human history and society, based avowedly to a considerable extent 



