v.] " MODERN SYMPOSIUM." 65 



forgotten as his predecessor, while the same barren 

 platitudes will be echoed by some new writer in the 

 scientific phraseology then current. 



But there is another way of looking at materialism 

 which makes it for a moment seem important, and 

 which serves to explain, though not to justify, the 

 alarm with which many excellent people contemplate 

 the progress of modern science. A conspicuous 

 characteristic of materialism is the endeavour to in- 

 terpret mind as a product as the transient result of 

 a certain specific aggregation of matter. To a person 

 familiar with post-Berkeleian psychology it seems 

 clear that such an endeavour is quite hopeless, and 

 that no such interpretation of mind can ever be made. 

 But a multitude of very respectable readers, who are 

 not so profoundly conversant with metaphysics as 

 Spencer and Huxley, have taken it into their heads 

 that the doctrine of evolution is advancing with 

 rapid strides towards just such an interpretation of 

 mind; and hence it is quite common to allude to 

 Spencer and Huxley as " materialists," which, to my 

 mind, is very much as if one were to allude to 

 Mr. Wendell Phillips as a distinguished pro-slavery 

 orator. 



The mistake, however, is not unnatural when we 

 consider its causes. In point of fact the terminology 



F 



