616 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that in this case, also, we are thrown back upon subjective impressions, 

 or, in other words, upon mental experiences ; but these experiences 

 have at once a certain breadth and a certain intimacy about them, 

 which leads us in general to give them the preference, and to make 

 what seems to be the source of them our very type of reality, to which 

 we apply the special name of matter. 



Considering the subject further, we perceive that sight and hearing 

 are, strictly speaking, specialized forms of the sense of touch forms 

 so specialized that their fundamental similarity to touch is commonly 

 lost sight of. There is, therefore, no good reason for treating their 

 revelations as less founded on reality than those which we owe to mus- 

 cular sensation ; yet, for all that, matter, to the popular mind, will 

 always be something which directly appeals to the sense of touch. 



We may now begin to see what materialism is. Materialism is a 

 form of belief, or mode of thought, which in all things prefers to rest 

 on the evidence of the broadest impressions of physical sense, and which 

 suspects, where it does not deny, the reality of aught that can not be 

 brought to the test of sense-impression. It objects to advancing be- 

 yond the primary elements of consciousness ; and any steps which it 

 takes in the region of mental or moral phenomena it takes grudgingly 

 and with a constant dread lest it should be led to recognize as real any- 

 thing that can not he felt as we feel sticks and stones. The material- 

 ist has to live as other men, and, where his theories are not at stake, 

 he will use ordinary human language as freely as others. He will talk 

 of hope and fear, of love and hatred, of ambition and apathy, of honor 

 and disgrace, of character and motive and principle, as if he knew what 

 he meant, and as if the words he used answered to certain realities of 

 human life. But, once touch his theory, and he will seek to drain these 

 words of all meaning, or else fall back upon vague talk about " modes 

 of matter." 



Materialism is the refuge of minds that have been immaturely freed 

 from spiritualism, or perhaps we may more fitly say, spiritism. By 

 spiritism we mean that undeveloped condition of the mind in which 

 hypothetical existences are required at every turn to account for ob- 

 served phenomena, in which the mind can not bear to be left alone 

 with facts. The child learning to walk holds by its mother's finger ; 

 the mind learning to think uses such hypotheses as it can construct, 

 and for physical acts it frames spiritual antecedents. The child who 

 thinks it can walk before it really can, and leaves its mother's finger, 

 finds itself compelled to creep along by the wall. In like manner the 

 materialist who has let go his spirit hypotheses is compelled to creep 

 along by the wall, to rest upon something hard, in order to steady his 

 steps. Divert his attention, and he will walk for a while with his 

 hands free ; but, remind him where he is, and he totters back in a mo- 

 ment to his tangible support. 



The positivist, on the contrary, is a man who has learned to walk 



