6 2 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



finds a partner who has money, and the importance which he attaches 

 to this obvious and, so to speak, palpable condition, leads him to over- 

 look the less obvious but equally important conditions of character, 

 compatibility of disposition, and business aptitude. He finds to his 

 cost in a short time that these things should not have been overlooked. 

 Men, again, who have unlimited faith in the power of statute law to 

 work moral reforms are so far materialists. Their trust is really in 

 physical force. The whole school of political economists have helped 

 to cultivate materialistic modes of thought, by making abstractions of 

 all the influences that modify the working of their so-called economic 

 laws. The truth of the matter is, that the moral condition of society 

 at any given time profoundly modifies the whole course of business. 

 Paralyze confidence between man and man, and the whole commercial 

 and industrial world falls out of gear. Restore confidence, and the 

 wheels of exchange once more begin to move. In a thousand ways, 

 that people with materialistic modes of thought are apt to overlook, 

 tangible results depend upon intangible causes, or are governed by in- 

 tangible conditions. A true philosophy bids us always to try and rise 

 in our speculations to the level of the phenomena with which we have 

 to deal, and always to beware of denying or ignoring the complexity 

 of a problem merely to indulge our intellectual indolence. Material- 

 ism, according to Comte's definition, is essentially the habit of judg- 

 ing things from too low a plane, and this is the sense in which I use 

 the word throughout this paper. To suppose that any particular gross- 

 ness attaches to matter is a conception worthy only of the moles and 

 bats of philosophy. Before we could affirm grossness or anything else 

 of matter we should have to get some of it, and compare it with some- 

 thing that was not matter, but which yet could be legitimately com- 

 pared with it. Until this feat is accomplished, it would be well for all 

 sensible people to refrain equally from praise and from abuse of matter. 

 What there can be no risk of error in assuming is, that the exercise of 

 certain faculties gives us the conception we have of matter, and that 

 the exercise of other faculties gives us mental experiences of quite a 

 different order. The materialist insists upon the convertibility of all 

 experiences of the latter kind into experiences of the former kind. 

 The positivist, on the contrary, feels under no obligation to perform 

 any operation of this kind ; and fails to see how he would be advan- 

 taged if he could or did perform it. He is content to believe that we 

 are in no less real a world when we are dealing with human affections 

 and passions, with social laws and forces, and with spiritual results in 

 general, than when we are occupying ourselves with things that appeal 

 directly to the outward senses, and that give us our impressions of 

 form, color, and weight. 



It has thus, I trust, been made apparent why the positivist would 

 refuse to be called a materialist, and why he would equally object to 

 be spoken of as an idealist. He is. the only man, as it seems to me, 



