THE SPECTRE OF VITALISM 455 



Chemical Society in October last, Sir Oliver adopts an ingenious 

 method of casting plausibility on the existence of ghosts and 

 spiritual events. He adduces a number of instances of the 

 materialising tendencies of science, with a view to showing that 

 the vague, ethereal conceptions of antiquity have given place to 

 definite material entities, previously unsuspected : his suggestion 

 being that as knowledge grows ghosts and phantoms will also 

 become materialised. He gives a variety of instances of this 

 materialising tendency : such as the recent attempt by Prof. 

 Callendar to resuscitate caloric or the material theory of heat; 

 the substitution of material oxygen for its vague predecessor the 

 "acidifying principle"; the tracing of muscular fatigue to material 

 toxins ; the causation of malaria by the bite of a mosquito, " a 

 thing which can be crushed with the fingers "; and so on. 



But whatever may be the modern tendency with regard to the 

 kind of entities dealt with by science, there surely can be no 

 questioning the fact that in the case of the phantasmagorical 

 entities of metaphysics the tendency is towards increasing 

 rarefaction and de-materialisation. The phantasms of the early 

 Greek philosophers were eminently materialistic. Democritus 

 conceived of the soul as made up of smooth round particles. 

 Thales traced the origin of the universe to the material substance 

 water. But by the time we have reached Plato, the concepts of 

 philosophy become entirely abstract ancLmon-material. That 

 this is the necessary course of philosophic development, I have 

 attempted to show in my book Modern Science and the Illusions of 

 Prof. Bergson : for as science advances, the concrete entities of 

 the early philosophers become ever more subject to criticism. If 

 the soul consist of solid particles, science demands the liberty to 

 measure and weigh them. Thus spiritual existences can only 

 hold their own against advancing knowledge by becoming 

 always more ethereal and intangible. They elude the grasp of 

 science as they are de-materialised in proportion to the vigour 

 of scientific assault. 



An exactly parallel development has taken place in modern 

 philosophy — where the concepts are now so abstract that only 

 the specially initiated can understand them. Already many of 

 the old phantasms have been refined out of existence altogether 

 and the rest are fast following. In theology, the same process 

 may be observed. In the middle ages, the soul was a thing of 

 definite human form and shape completely materialised ; that the 



