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ON THE NEW MATERIALISM * 

 By LIONEL S. BEALE, F.R.S. 



I propose in as few words as possible to ask those present to consider 

 certain views bearing on the first principles of religion and philosophy which 

 have exercised during recent years and continue to exercise an extraordinary 

 influence upon the opinions held by many persons of intelligence. Acqui- 

 escence in the views in question, I think it will be found, involves the 

 acceptance of ideas which are not consistent with one another, of doctrines 

 which are contradictory, and principles which are incompatible or even 

 mutually destructive. To give this fashionable confusion of doubt, denial, 

 assertion, assumption, conjecture, prophecy, any name which has been 

 already adopted by any philosophic or religious sect that has existed in the 

 past, would be unjust, for the conflicting opinions now entertained cannot 

 l>e formulated, and it is doubtful whether, among those who have consented 

 to adopt them generally and vaguely, any two persons could be found who 

 would agree concerning the elementary propositions on which anything like 

 a philosophy could be established. Neither of the terms Rationalism, 

 Materialism, Agnosticism, is strictly applicable to this most recent and 

 most fanciful of all the creeds ever offered for adoption. To call it Rational- 

 ism would not be correct, for it does not rest on reason ; indeed, it is neither 

 reasonable nor rational. Materialism would be equally inappropriate, and 

 no disciple of Epicurus would admit that it at all resembled the doctrine to 

 which he had given his adherence. Neither the hypotheses, nor the asser- 

 tions, nor the prophecies of the materialist of the new, would be recognised 

 or approved by one of the old school. Agnosticism, again, would be a 

 complete misnomer, for the advocates of this new philosophy profess to know 

 all things and to account for all the phenomena of nature. They tell us not 

 only the origin but the end of all. Commencing with cosmic vapour, they 

 trace the evolution of all non-living and living, and discern the further 

 changes which are to progress through a distant future until all again 

 eventuates in cosmic mist. Those who know all this can hardly be denomi- 

 nated Agnostics. 



One grand central principle of this new philosophy seems to be the 

 assumption that what is not now capable of proof, but is affirmed to be true 

 by its exponents, will be proved to be true by new discoveries which we 

 are assured will certainly be made at some future time by the scientific 

 investigations of that period, among which discoveries is to be the proof 

 of the confident assertion now so often repeated, and considered to be a 



* Being an Address delivered in July by the Author, and .specially 

 revised by him for the Victoria Institute. It is inserted here by reason 

 of its importance. ED. 



