MATERIALISM AND MORALITY. 477 



host of less famous writers widely influential on English thought, must 

 in strictness be reckoned as materialists. All three do, in effect, express 

 the entire man by matter, his intellectual and moral being as well as his 

 corporal frame. All three do, in effect, restrict our knowledge to the 

 phenomenal universe, of which consciousness and will are, for them, 

 fortuitous or necessary products. Now I am far from asserting that 

 there is anything to prevent us from being spiritualists in psychology, 

 while in cosmology we accept the dynamical explanation, and confess 

 that everywhere in the universe are forces and centers of forces. But 

 this is a very different view from that which regards intellect as a 

 mode of motion, or as a manifestation of physical energy. " The fac- 

 ulties of the mind, feeling, and will," writes Mr. Frederic Harrison, 

 "are directly dependent upon the physical organs. To talk to me of 

 mind, feeling, will, in the absence of physical organs, is to use lan- 

 guage which to me, at least, is pure nonsense." Mr. Harrison's creed, 

 it would appear, may be summed up in the simple symbol, " I believe 

 in the brain, the viscera, and the reproductive apparatus." Deity 

 Avithout a stomach is inconceivable to him. This very eloquent and 

 very positive writer has the courage of his opinions. But, as it ap- 

 pears to me, the doctrines of Professor Clifford, of Professor Huxley, 

 of Mr. Herbert Spencer, in their ultimate resolution, are substantially 

 at one with his. Whatever differences divide these illustrious men 

 from one another, they all agree in putting aside, as unverifiable, 

 everything which the senses can not verify ; everything beyond the 

 bounds of physical science ; everything which can not be brought into 

 a laboratory and dealt with chemically. It will be found in the long run 

 that there are two, and only two, great schools of thought, two schools 

 which, in common with the philosophical writers of Germany, France, 

 and Italy, I shall denominate Spiritualism* and Materialism, until 

 better terms are forthcoming. Spiritualism seeks the explanation of 

 the universe from within, and with Kant holds it as a fundamental 

 truth that the nature of our thinking being imposes our way of con- 

 ceiving, of valuing, and even of apprehending sensible things. Mate- 

 rialism maintains that in those sensible things must be sought the 

 explanation of our ideas and of our wills. Spiritualism postulates a 

 First Cause possessing absolute freedom, and recognizes true causality 

 in man also, with his endowment of limited and conditioned liberty 

 of the will. Materialism holds that we can know nothing before the 

 proximate and determining causes of phenomena, and demands, in the 

 words of Mr. Huxley, "the banishment from all regions of human 

 thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity.". Spiritualism insists 

 upon the unity of consciousness, upon consciousness of personal identity, 



* The misuse of the word Spiritualism to denote a certain sect of vulvar charlatans 

 is unfortunate, but " abusus non tollit usum." The Roman Church could hardly be ex- 

 pected to abandon her description of herself as Catholic and Apostolic because these ad- 

 jectives have been adopted by the followers of Mr. Irving. 



