MARTI NEAU AND MATERIALISM. i^j 



soul, as represented by Mr. Martineau. Beyond this I defy him to 

 go ; and yet he rashly it might be said petulantly kicks away the 

 only philosophic-foundation ou which it is possible for him to build 

 his religion. 



He twits incidentally the modern scientific interpretation of Nature 

 because of its want of cheerfulness. " Let the new futui-e," he says, 

 " preach its own gospel and devise, if it can, the means of making the 

 tidings glacV This is a common argument : " If you only knew the 

 comfort of belief! " My reply to it is that I choose the nobler part 

 of Emerson, when, after various disenchantments, he exclaimed, "I 

 covet truth!'''' The gladness of true heroism visits the heart of him 

 who is really competent to say this. Besides, "gladness" is an emo- 

 tion, and Mr. Martineau theoretically scorns the emotional. I am not, 

 however, acquainted with a writer who draws more largely upon this 

 soui'ce, while mistaking it for something objective. "To reach the 

 cause," he says, " there is no need to go into the past, as though being 

 missed here he could be found there. But when once he has been 

 apprehended by the proper organs of divine apprehension, the whole 

 life of humanity is recognized as the scene of his agency." That 

 Mr. Martineau should have lived so long, thought so much, and failed 

 to recognize the entirely subjective character of this creed, is highly 

 instructive. His " proper organs of divine apprehension " denied, I 

 may say, to some of the greatest intellects and noblest men in this 

 and other ages lie at the very core of his emotions. 



In fact, it is when Mr. Martineau is most purely emotional that he 

 scorns the emotions ; and it is when he is most purely subjective, that 

 he rejects subjectivity. He pays a just and liberal tribute to the 

 character of John Stuai't Mill. But in the light of Mill's philosophy, 

 benevolence, honor, purity, having "shrunk into mere unaccredited 

 subjective susceptibilities, have lost all support from Omniscient ap- 

 proval, and all presumable accordance with the reality of things." 

 If Mr. Martineau had given them any inkling of the process by which 

 he renders the "subjective susceptibilities" objective; or how be 

 arrives at an objective ground of " Omniscient approval," gratitude 

 from his pupils would have been his just meed. But as it is, he leaves 

 them lost in an iridescent cloud of words, after exciting a desire 

 whiofc he is incompetent to appease. 



" We are," he says, in another place, " forever shaping our repre- 

 sentations of invisible things into forms of definite opinion, and throw- 

 ing them to the front, as if they were the photographic equivalent of 

 our real faith. It is a delusion which affects us alL Yet somehow 

 the essence of our religion never finds its way into these frames of 

 theory: as we put them together it slips away, and, if we turn to 

 pursue it, still retreats behind ; ever ready to work with the will, to 

 unbind and sweeten the affections, and bathe the life with reverence, 

 but refusing to be seen, or to pass from a divine hue of thinking into 



