672 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



destroyed by direct injury of the brain, by the disorganizing action of 

 disease, and by the chemical action of certain substances which, when 

 taken in excess, are poisons to the nervous system. When we look 

 sincerely at the facts, we can not help perceiving that it is just as 

 closely dependent upon organization as is the meanest function of 

 mind ; that there is not an argument to prove the so-called material- 

 ism of one part of mind which does not apply with equal force to the 

 whole mind. Seeing that we know no more essentially what matter 

 is than what mind is, being unable in either case to go beyond the 

 phenomena of which we have experience, it is of interest to ask why 

 the spiritualist considers his theory to be of so much higher an intel- 

 lectual and moral order than materialism, and looks down with undis- 

 guised pity and contempt on the latter as inferior, degrading, and even 

 dangerous ; why the materialist should be deemed guilty, not of intel- 

 lectual error only, but of something like moral guilt. His philosophy 

 has been lately denounced as a " philosophy of dirt." An eminent 

 prelate of the English Church, in an outburst of moral indignation, 

 once described him as possibly " the most odious and ridiculous being 

 in all the multiform creation " ; and a recent writer in a French philo- 

 sophical journal uses still stronger language of abhorrence : " I abhor 

 them," he says, " with all the force of my soul. ... I detest and 

 abominate them from the bottom of my heart, and I feel an invincible 

 repugnance and horror when they dare to reduce psychology and ethics 

 to their bestial physiology that is, in short, to make of man a brute, 

 of the brute a plant, of the plant a machine. . . . This school is a liv- 

 ing and crying negation of humanity." The question is, what there 

 is in materialism to warrant the sincere feeling and earnest expression 

 of so great a horror of it. Is the abhorrence well founded, or is it, 

 perhaps, that the doctrine is hated, as the individual oftentimes is, be- 

 cause misunderstood ? 



This must certainly be allowed to be a fair inquiry by those who 

 reflect that no less eminent a person and good a Christian than Milton 

 was a decided materialist. Several scattered passages in "Paradise 

 Lost " plainly betray his opinions ; but it is not necessary to lay any 

 stress upon them, because in his " Treatise on Christian Doctrine " he 

 sets them forth in the most plain and uncompromising way, and sup- 

 ports them with an elaborate detail of argument. He is particularly 

 earnest to prove that the common doctrine that the spirit of man 

 should be separate from the body, so as to have a perfect and intelli- 

 gent existence independently of it, is nowhere said in Scripture, and 

 is at variance both with nature and reason ; and he declares that 

 " man is a living being, intrinsically and properly one and individual, 

 not compound and separable, not, according to the common opinion, 

 made up and framed of two distinct parts, as of soul and body." An- 

 other illustrious instance of a good Christian who for a great part of 

 his life avowed his belief that " the nature of man is simple and uni- 



