THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 589 



that the subjects of the empire were glad to change their 

 masters, because instead of multiplied, intricate, and vexatious 

 taxes, the legacy of old Rome, they found themselves subject 

 to a simple tribute, easily collected and easily paid.* 



^ 



THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM, f 



By WILHELM OSTWALD, 

 professor of chemistry in the university of lkip9ic. 



THE complaint has gone up in all ages that so little agreement 

 prevails respecting the most important and most funda- 

 mental questions of humanity. Only within our own days has the 

 cry with respect to one of the greatest of these questions been 

 silenced ; and although many contradictions are still current, it 

 may yet be said that rarely at any time has a so relatively great 

 unanimity existed concerning the theory of the world of outward 

 phenomena as prevails just now in our scientific century. From 

 the mathematician to the practicing physician, every scientifically 

 thinking man, in answer to the question how he supposes the 

 world is intrinsically constituted, would sum up his view, by say- 

 ing that the universe is composed of atoms in motion, and that 

 these atoms and the forces operating between them are the ulti- 

 mate realities of which individual phenomena consist. The 

 phrase can be heard and read in hundredfold repetitions, that no 

 other explanation of the physical world can be found than one 

 that rests upon the " mechanics of atoms " ; matter and motion 

 seem to be the ultimate concepts to which the diversity of natural 

 phenomena must be referred. This conception may be called 

 scientific materialism. 



I purpose to express my conviction that this so generally ac- 

 cepted conception is untenable ; that this mechanical view of the 

 world does not answer the purpose for which it has been formed, 

 and that it is contradictory of indubitable and generally known 



* The most available source of information on this subject is the historian Gibbon (De- 

 cline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edition with notes by Milman, Guizot, and Smith ; 

 New York, Harper's), who in turn specially cites as the authority for his statements 

 the two collections of ancient laws designated by the names of the two Byzantine Em- 

 perors under whom they were made, as the Codex Theodosianus and Codex Justinianus, 

 and the writings of Zosimus, a Greek historian, who lived in the early part of the fifth 

 century a. d., and whose history of the Roman Empire is still extant. For an exceedingly 

 graphic account of Roman experiences in attempting to tax personal property (from which 

 quotations have here been made) see Roman Imperialism, by J. R. Seeley, London, 1870. 



f An address delivered before the third general session of the meeting of the Society of 

 German Naturalists and Physicians, at Lubeck, on September 20, 1895. 



