THE CELL DOCTRINE. 105 



truth. But with a view to the progress of science, 

 the materialistic terminology is in every way to be 

 preferred. For it connects thought with the other 

 phenomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry 

 into the nature of those physical conditions, or con- 

 comitants of thought, which are more or less acces- 

 sible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, 

 help us to exercise the same kind of control over 

 the world of thought as we already possess in respect 

 to the material world; whereas, the alternative, or 

 spiritualistic terminology is utterly barren, and leads 

 to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas. 

 Thus, there can be little doubt that the further science 

 advances, the more extensively and consistently will 

 all the phenomena of nature be represented by ma- 

 terialistic formulae and symbols. But the man of 

 science, who, forgetting the limits of philosophical 

 inquiry, slides from these formulae and symbols into 

 what is commonly understood by materialism, seems 

 to me to place himself on a level with the mathema- 

 tician, who should mistake the x's and y's, with 

 which he works his problems, for real entities and 

 with this further disadvantage, as compared with the 

 mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of 

 no practical consequence, while the errors of sys- 

 tematic materialism may paralyze the energies and 

 destroy the beauty of a life." 



These are the views of the "physicists," so-called, 

 a school represented by Prof. Huxley, Prof. Owen, 

 Herbert Spencer, Mr. Grove, Prof. Tyndall, and 

 others. Prof. Owen, in the last pages of vol. iii of 

 " The Anatomy of the Vertebrates," declares him- 



