MATERIALISM AND POSITIVISM. 617 



alone. He asks only support for his feet ; and that he finds in the 

 instinctive confidence in his physical and mental powers, with which, 

 in common with other men, he is endowed. To the positivist a fact is 

 a fact, wherever and in whatever guise he meets it. And all facts stand 

 to him upon an equal level in point of authority. Having learned to 

 dispense with the spirit hypothesis, he has learned to dispense also 

 with bad metaphysics, particularly with the bad metaphysics that lie 

 at the foundation of materialism. He repudiates the idea that a su- 

 perior degree of reality attaches to hard things, and he bewares of 

 drawing the metaphysical conclusion that tangible things constitute 

 the stuff of the universe. A hard thing is well in its way : so is a soft 

 thing ; so is an impalpable thing. What the universe is ultimately 

 made of he does not inquire, because he knows the inquiry is vain. 

 He is content with facts, and to him a fact is vihatever produces a com- 

 plete and definite impression %ipon the mind. He does not make his 

 own mind the measure and test of all possible existence, but he holds 

 that it is the measure and test of all things that concern him. There 

 may be things of which he knows and can know nothing, but he in- 

 dulges in no speculations in regard to these his duty being, as he 

 conceives, to apply himself assiduously to the knowable order. 



To the positivist, I have said, all facts are of equal authority ; and, 

 in order to decide what is a fact, and what therefore he should treat 

 as a reality, he merely asks, Is it capable of definitely affecting my 

 mind ? Whatever stands definitely related to the mind is a fact, and 

 has all the reality that can be discovered in anything whatsoever. All 

 we can say of a piece of granite is that it definitely affects the mind ; 

 we know it as so-and-so. Whether it be, as Mr. Herbert Spencer 

 maintains, but the representation of an unknowable reality, the posi- 

 tivist does not inquire : enough for him that he is able to cognize it 

 under certain definite forms. But what we here say of a piece of 

 granite, which would be the materialist's choice illustration of real 

 existence, we may say equally of an action, a word, a thought, an 

 impulse, a characteristic, a tendency. These are all facts, capable of 

 definitely affecting the mind, and often affecting the mind more inti- 

 mately and powerfully by far than tangible objects. What is it in my 

 friend that is of most concern to me ? His bodily frame ? By no 

 means. He could not exist without a bodily frame, any more than he 

 could walk without ground to walk on. But his bodily frame may 

 have nothing in it to please the eye, or in any way to arrest attention. 

 The color of his hair, his weight, or even his stature, might change 

 materially, and the difference to me would be little more than if he 

 had changed his clothes, provided the disposition of his mind, those 

 mental and moral qualities that had won my regard, had remained un- 

 changed. In this case, disposition, a thing wholly impalpable, is of 

 vastly more account to me, as an element in my environment, than the 

 whole assemblage of physical properties and qualities represented by 



