334 An Essay on Dreaming, includvig 



with the stigma of materialism. So many look to the name and 

 so few to the meaning, that an appellation, supposed to indicate 

 everv thing that is contradictory of good sense, inimical to morals, 

 and injurious to society, affixed without discrimination by persons 

 who, in the opinion of tiie world, never act without exercising 

 their judgement, is sufficient to blast the fortune and fame of the 

 most deserving individual who happens to become the subject of 

 their unwise precipitation. But it is not the individual only who 

 sufifers, but the whole body of which these persons are members. 

 What man, capable of an original tliought or a bold discovery, 

 will venture to submit his labours to their animadversion, if, in 

 proportion to their novelty, importance and interest, they are to 

 be visited with disregard and opprobrium, in place of the honour 

 they may have earned ? 



Let me not, however, be understood as casting the slightest re- 

 flection on mv learned opponents. 1 am persuaded they acted 

 with conscientiousness, and to the best of their judgement^ but 

 from weak and illusory motives. These learned individuals no 

 doubt convinced themselves that it was their duty to oppose to 

 the utmost, the tendency of opinions which their apprehensions 

 conjured into a dangerous heresy, and which they embodied to 

 their imaginations under the frightful appellation of materialism. 

 If they had lived in the days of Copernicus, and were to pass a 

 judgement on his discoveries, with their good will, the rotation 

 of the earth would never have found its way into day-light — rank 

 heresy ! it contradicts the Book of Joshua ! stifle it in its birth ! 

 your duty to God requires the suppression of those truths which 

 most honour him ! 



No, they replv, these are not truths — for truths must be known 

 by their utility, and utility is not an attribute of heresy and ma- 

 terialism. Such is their argument ; but, by a dexterous use of 

 these terms, there is not a truth in physics or morals that might 

 not be easily transmuted into falsehood and crime. 1 unreservedly 

 subscribe to the dictum of Warburton, that " we may as certainly 

 conclude that general utility is always founded on truth, as that 

 truth is always productive of general utility*." But short-sighted 

 and ignorant as we are, is it for us to pervade the vast and com- 

 plicated system of Providence, and decide with formal precision 

 what is to be infallibly useful or pernicious in the administration 

 of the universe? Our business is to discover truth wherever we 

 may have skill enough to find it, and leave it to God to confirm 

 its utility. " In matters (says Hooker) which concern the actions of 

 God, the most dutiful way on our part, is to search what God hath 

 done 3 and, with meekness, to admire that, rather than to dispute 



* Warburton's works, 3d vol. p. 225. London, 1811. 



what 



