480 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



eternal series of visible movements, more or less complex, all reduci- 

 ble to invisible movements, obeying the laws of physics. Reason, in- 

 telligence, will, personality are for bim mere metaphors. He re- 

 duces them all to mechanism and movement. The intellect he regards 

 as a thinking machine, just as the stomach is a digesting machine. 

 He will speak of the soul, if you please ; but, like Mr. Tyndall, he 

 warns you that you must take it merely as a poetical expression, a 

 rhetorical figure. With reason did Micbelet, after reading his admi- 

 rably written book on Intelligence, exclaim in dismay, " II me prend 

 mon moi." France, after all, is still the country in which the move- 

 ments of the European mind may be most fruitfully studied. If Ger- 

 many is the mine of ideas, it is France which mints them and makes 

 them current coin. Intellectually considered, Italy and Spain are 

 merely outlying provinces of France, and her influence upon Eng- 

 lish and Teutonic thinkers, if less magisterial, is hardly less ef- 

 fective. 



I consider, then, that if we survey the higher thought of Europe, 

 as a whole, we must find it largely given over to materialism. And 

 if we turn to the more popular literature, in which is the truest ex- 

 pression of society, the same tale is unfolded. What a portent is that 

 large and ever-growing school of "naturalistic " fiction of which M. 

 Zola is the honored and prosperous chief, and which is so eagerly read, 

 and so largely imitated, throughout the civilized world ! " Toute 

 metaphysique m'epouvante" that master tells us. His works, he 

 claims, are conceived in the true "scientific" spirit. Matter is for 

 him the only reality, and in its honor he raises paeans " like the shrieks 

 of a hyena at discovering that the universe is all actually carrion." 

 But it is not merely in the literature of the erotic passion, and of the 

 genetic impulse, that the mark of the beast is plainly visible. How 

 many a grave writer of our day has acquired a reputation for origi- 

 nality simply upon the strength of a fantastic physical terminology ! 

 Instead of intellect, he speaks of nervous centers ; instead of life, of 

 the play of cellular activities ; instead of mental energy, of cerebral 

 erethism. And his readers, piquing themselves on their distrust of 

 everything outside the sphere of what they call facts, will "wonder 

 with a foolish face of praise." In truth, every branch of intellectual 

 activity bears witness to the advance of materialism in the popular 

 mind ; to the dying out of the old spiritual and ideal types. Thus, in 

 politics, we see the domination of the brute force of numbers, of ma- 

 jorities told by head,' becoming almost everywhere an accomplished 

 fact. The instincts and passions of the masses, who are little more 

 than matter in motion, are accepted as the supreme law, in the place 

 of justice and virtue, of reason and religion. Art, too, has bowed her 

 Bacred head to the materialistic yoke. It has been well remarked that 

 in the pictures of the old masters you have not merely a natural scene, 

 but the soul of the painter who looked upon it. That attribute of soul 



