1879.1 1^ [Chase. 



proof in another, proof which would be necessarily sophistical if it could 

 be plausibly framed. The man who is either blind or color blind, or who has 

 any other bodily defect, has an imperfect instrument for the use of his spir- 

 itual ability, and the imperfection will affect all his work ; but it will not 

 prevent his reaching the absolute and the relative knowledge which are 

 best for him, provided he employs his ability to the best advantage. If 

 his limitations unfit him for the reception of any truths but those of physi- 

 cal or natural science, let him devote himself to the labor for which he is 

 best fitted ; but let him not scoff at other truths, and above all, let him not 

 waste time and strength in seeking to solve, by scientific or "positive" 

 methods, problems which can be solved only by metaphysical or by theo- 

 logical methods. Philosophy and religion offer to science the help which 

 is needed in order to make knowledge complete and symmetrical. If the 

 help is rejected, every attempt to supply its place, by means which God 

 has not sanctioned, will surely fail. 



Berkeley's teachings have greatly modified modern materialistic theories. 

 The old idea of inertia, as the essential property of matter, and as implying 

 complete passivity under the controlling influence of immaterial force, is 

 nearly obsolete. Not only is force continually spoken of as material, but 

 will is at the same time spoken of as the "highest form of force." Every 

 writer may be allowed to define the terms which he uses, in his own way, and 

 a complete system of science may be, undoubtedly, built upon a defini- 

 tion of matter as "a substance which maybe either conscious or uncon- 

 scious, either living or dead, either active or incapable of action, either di- 

 recting or directed, either originating or originated." But there is always 

 danger that a generalization, which embraces opposite qualities in a single 

 conception, may lead to inadvertent reasoning in a circle and to the beg- 

 ging of important questions. It is well that the controlling supremacy of 

 intelligence, upon which Berkeley insisted so strongly, should become more 

 generally recognized, but it is not well that any needless risk should be run of 

 assuming, in defiance of all positive proof, that anything which has once been 

 subordinate can ever develop itself into supremacy over what has once 

 been supreme. Even if we enlarge our ideas of matter so as to embrace 

 all possible forms of being, we do not remove a single difficulty thereby. 

 The same questions come crowding up before us, only under different 

 forms. Instead of asking, "what are spirit, and soul, and mind, and will, 

 and force," we ask, "what are consciousness, and life, and action, and 

 government, and origination." In spite of all our attempts to reconcile 

 the unreconcilable, the eternal facts remain, that there are spiritual phe- 

 nomena in the field of consciousness and time, and physical phenomena in 

 the field of inertia and space ; that all attempts to subordinate the former 

 to the latter have always failed, and that the physical exists only to serve 

 the wants and purposes of the spiritual. 



It is not strange that mechanical philosophers should sometimes think 

 that all consciousness is connected with a brain, for the highest organic 

 mechanism that is directly and sensibly tributary to consciouness is un- 



