476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sayings certainly do not sound like materialism. I think, however, 

 that if we closely examine his writings, we shall find the persistence 

 of force his one formula. With that he will bring for you life out of 

 the non-living ; morality out of the unethical ; the spiritual out of the 

 physical. The persistence of force ! I trust it will not seem to exhibit 

 an unappreciativeness, which I am far from feeling, of the high gifts 

 and unwearied self-devotion of v his eminent man, if I say that he has 

 always appeared to me to belong to a class of thinkers aptly described 

 in one of Voltaire's letters : " Des gens que se mettent, sans facon, 

 dans la place de Dieu : qui veulent creer le monde avec la parole." 

 But this autotheism is really materialism in disguise. If all beings, 

 all modes and forms of existence, are but transformations of force, 

 obeying only mechanical laws, the laws of movement — and that is 

 what Mr. Spencer's doctrine amounts to, if there is any meaning in 

 words — what is the universe but a senseless mechanism ? Mr. Spen- 

 cer, indeed, protests against the application to matter of such epithets 

 as "gross" or "brute." He delights to expatiate on its wonderful 

 properties ; and in his latest work he speaks of " a universe every- 

 where alive ; alive, if not in a restricted sense, at least in a general 

 sense." Still the fact remains that Mr. Spencer seeks to interpret all 

 things in terms of matter and motion, and holds life to be a mere 

 result of physical forces. There are only two conceivable hypotheses 

 open to us. Either Nature is the outcome of intellect, or intellect is 

 the outcome of Nature. Mr. Spencer's teaching, considered as a 

 whole, is an elaborate argument on behalf of the latter of these hy- 

 potheses. And what is this but materialism ? I know that Mr. Spen- 

 cer would call himself a realist. I think that Professor Huxley, in 

 better moments " among the many workings of his mind," would call 

 himself an idealist ; and, as we have seen, the friend who has w r rittcn 

 so well about the late Professor Clifford calls him an idealistic monist. 

 Mr. Pollock, indeed, goes on to observe, " It is hardly worth while to 

 dispute about names, when more serious things remain for discussion." 

 These words seem to me in themselves a revelation, not, indeed, of 

 light, but of darkness ; they give us a glimpse of chaos and the void 

 inane. Surely names are the signs of, nay, the substitutes for, ideas ; 

 formulas summing up for us, briefly, it may be a train of reasoning, a 

 series of sensations, a multitude of images. Unless we use them as 

 parrots do, which, to be sure, is the habit of many people, they stand 

 to us in the place of things. Hence the immense importance, upon 

 which I have already touched, of exact terminology. If our nomen- 

 clature is vague, we shall be continually mistaking one thing for an- 

 other. "Pantheism or potthcism — what matter, so long as it is 

 true?" Mr. Carlyle asked. But my present inquiry is not if the 

 teaching, whether of the late Mr. Clifford, of Mr. Huxley, of Mr. Her- 

 bert Spencer, is true, but what that teaching really is. And my con- 

 tention is that all these three gifted men, whom I select as types of a 



