478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



upon the icJihcit dcs Ego — the selfhood of the Me — as the original 

 and ultimate facts of man's existence. Materialism dissolves the Ego 

 iuto a collection of sensations, makes of consciousness an accidental 

 and superficial effect of mechanism, and exhibits man as a mere se- 

 quence of action and reaction. Spiritualism maintains the absolute 

 nature of ethics ; the immutable distinction between moral good and 

 evil. Materialism refers everything to heredity, temperament, envi- 

 ronment, convention. Spiritualism affirms the supersensuous, yes, let 

 us venture upon the word, the supernatural, in man, and finds irre- 

 fragable evidence of it in 



"... this main miracle, that thou art thou, 

 With power on thine own act, and on the world." 



Materialism makes of the soul, with Professor Tyndall, "a poetical 

 rendering of a phenomenon which refuses the yoke of ordinary me- 

 chanical laws," explains will and conscience as merely a little force and 

 heat organized, and, in Coleridge's pungent phrase, "peeps into death 

 to look for life, as monkeys put their hands behind a looking-glass." 

 Such are the two great schools of thought which are disputing the 

 intellect of the world. 



Now, I take it, that one of the most striking signs of the times is 

 the extent to which materialism has triumphed throughout Europe. 

 Fifty or sixty years ago it might well have seemed as though Kant 

 had made an end in Germany of the doctrine which, derived by the 

 2)hilosophes of the last century from Locke, had been carried to its 

 logical issue by Cabanis and Condillac. In England the school of 

 Reid was, in some sort, doing a similar work. In France the influ- 

 ence of Royer Collard, Maine de Biran, Jouffroy, and Cousin — all, 

 whatever their differences, firmly attached to the main principles of 

 spiritualism — was dominant. In Italy the works of Pasquale Galuppi 

 had diffused some knowledge of the critical philosophy, and Rosmini's 

 " New Essay on the Origin of Ideas " had made its way into many 

 seminaries. Now, all is changed. In Germany a school has arisen based 

 on the empirical doctrines supposed to have been forever discarded, 

 but giving to them a new and more precise form. Of its many able 

 exponents it must suffice here to mention only one, Herr Biichner, 

 whose book on " Matter and Force " has had an immense success in 

 his own country, and lias been translated, I believe, into well-nigh all 

 European languages. M. Janet, no mean judge, reckons it as "the 

 tersest, frankest, and clearest system of materialism which has ap- 

 peared in Europe since the famous 'Systeme de la Nature.'" It is true 

 that in Germany the influence of these new materialistic doctrines 

 would appear to be on the wane. They are not specially fitted to rec- 

 ommend themselves to the Teutonic mind, with its innate bias to 

 idealism. And they have been vigorously combated by a number of ex- 

 tremely able writers, foremost among whom must be reckoned Langc 

 and Von Ilartmann, TJlrici and Lotze. Yet no one can carefully study 



