



MATERIALISM AND MORALITY. 475 



ception of the ultimate reality is " mind, not mind as we know it in 

 the complex form of thought and feeling, but those simpler elements 

 of which thought and feeling are built up." Well, of course, mate- 

 rialism affects to be monistic, for it seeks to explain the whole uni- 

 verse in terms of matter. But how is Mr. Clifford's monism idealis- 

 tic ? The element of which " even the simplest feeling is a complex" 

 he calls " mind-stuff." " Matter," he tells us, " is the mental picture 

 of which mind is the thing represented. Reason, intelligence, and 

 volition are properties of a complex, which is made up of elements, 

 themselves not rational, not intelligent, not conscious." Is it possible, 

 Mr. Pollock himself being judge, to call this doctrine idealism ? This 

 " mind-stuff," which, we are told, is the thin g-in- it self, of which " a 

 moving molecule of organic matter possesses a small piece," and 

 which, " when matter takes the complex form of a living human brain, 

 takes the form of a human consciousness, having intelligence and voli- 

 tion"— how is it possible to account for this "mind-stuff" as anything 

 but matter? Again, consider the teaching of Professor Huxley. 

 With whatever rhetorical ornaments he may gild it, what is its prac- 

 tical outcome but materialism? I am well aware of his opinion that 

 the question "whether there is really anything anthropomorphic, even 

 in man's nature," will ever remain an open one. I do not lose sight 

 of his recognition of "the necessity of cherishing the noblest and 

 most human of man's emotions by worship, for the most part of the 

 silent sort, at the altar of the Unknown and Unknowable." But, on 

 the other hand, I remember his positive declaration that "conscious- 

 ness is a function of nervous matter, when that nervous matter has 

 attained a certain degree of organization." I remember, too, his con- 

 fident anticipation that " we shall sooner or later arrive at a mechani- 

 cal equivalent of consciousness, just as we have arrived at a mechani- 

 cal equivalent of heat." And I do not forget that singularly power- 

 ful passage in his " Lay Sermons " — who that has once read it can forget 

 it ? — in which he enforces what he deems " the great truth," that " the 

 progress of science has in all ages meant, and now more than ever 

 means, the extension of the province of what we call matter and cau- 

 sation, and the concomitant gradual banishment, from all regions of 

 human thought, of what we call spirit and spontaniety" ; that "as 

 surely as every future grows out of the past and present, so will the 

 physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and 

 law until it is coextensive with knowledge, with feeling, with action." 

 Once more. Let us turn to a teacher more widely influential, perhaps, 

 than even Mr. Huxley. I mean Mr. Herbert Spencer. He, too, recog- 

 nizes " an unknown and unknowable power without beginning or end in 

 time." He tells us expressly in his " Psychology " that consciousness can 

 not be a mode of movement, and that if we must choose between 

 these two modes of being, as the generative and primitive mode, it 

 would be the first, and not the last, which he would choose. These 



