498 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



such time as the telepathy of the unconscious is more generally recog- 

 nized. 



However, some other assertions are made by Mr. Lilly, which more 

 or less involve matters of opinion whereof the rights and wrongs are 

 less easily settled, hut in respect of which he seems to me to err quite 

 as seriously as about the topics we have been hitherto discussing. 

 And the importance of these subjects leads me to venture upon saying 

 something about them, even though I am thereby compelled to leave 

 the safe ground of personal knowledge. 



Before launching the three torpedoes which have so sadly exploded 

 on board his own ship, Mr. Lilly says that with whatever " rhetorical 

 ornaments I may gild my teaching," it is "materialism." Let me ob- 

 serve, in passing, that rhetorical ornament is not in my way, and that 

 gilding refined gold would, to my mind, be less objectionable than 

 varnishing the fair face of truth with that pestilent cosmetic, rhetoric. 

 If I believed that I had any claim to the title of " materialist," as that 

 term is understood in the language of philosophy and not in that of 

 abuse, I should not attempt to hide it by any sort of gilding. I have 

 not found reason to care much for hard names in the course of the last 

 thirty years, and I am too old to develop a new sensitiveness. But, 

 to repeat what I have more than once taken pains to say in the most 

 unadorned of plain language, I repudiate, as philosophical error, the 

 doctrine of materialism as I understand it, just as I repudiate the doc- 

 trine of spiritualism as Mr. Lilly presents it, and my reason for thus 

 doing is, in both cases, the same ; namely, that, whatever their differ- 

 ences, materialists and spiritualists agree in making very positive as- 

 sertions about matters of which I am certain I know nothing, and 

 about which I believe they are, in truth, just as ignorant. And fur- 

 ther, that, even wdien their assertions are confined to topics which lie 

 within the range of my faculties, they often appear to me to be in the 

 wrong. And there is yet another reason for objecting to be identified 

 with either of these sects ; and that is that each is extremely fond of 

 attributing to the other, by way of reproach, conclusions which are 

 the property of neither, though they infallibly flow from the logical 

 development of the first principles of both. Surely a prudent man is 

 not to be reproached because he keeps clear of the squabbles of these 

 philosophical Bianchi and Neri, by refusing to have anything to do 

 with either? 



I understand the main tenet of materialism to be that there is 

 nothing in the universe but matter and force, and that all the phe- 

 nomena of Nature are explicable by deduction from the properties as- 

 signable to these two primitive factors. That great champion of 

 materialism whom Mr. Lilly appears to consider to be an authority in 

 physical science, Dr. Biichner, embodies this article of faith on his 

 title-page. Kraft und Staff — force and matter — are paraded as the 

 Alpha and Omega of existence. This I apprehend is the fundamental 



