68 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM II 



pletely won the day that Realism may be regarded 

 as dead and buried without hope of resurrection ? 

 Many people seem to think so, but it appears to 

 me that, without taking Catholic philosophy into 

 consideration, one has not to look about far to 

 find evidence that Eealism is still to the fore, and 

 < indeed extremely lively. 1 



The other day I happened to meet with a 

 report of a sermon recently preached in St. Paul's 

 Cathedral. From internal evidence I am inclined 

 to think that the report is substantially correct. 

 But as I have not the slightest intention of finding 

 fault with the eminent theologian and eloquent 

 preacher to whom the discourse is attributed, for 

 employment of scientific language in a manner for 

 which he could find only too many scientific pre- 

 cedents, the accuracy of the report in detail is 

 not to the purpose. I may safely take it as the 

 embodiment of views which are thought to be 



1 It may be desirable to observe that, in modern times, the 

 term "Realism" has acquired a si guifi cation wholly different 

 from that which attached to it in the middle ages. We com- 

 monly use it as the contrary of Idealism. The Idealist holds 

 that the phenomenal world has only a subjective existence, the 

 Realist that it has an objective existence, I am not aware that 

 any mediaeval philosopher was an Idealist in the sense in which 

 we apply the term to Berkeley. In fact, the cardinal defect 

 of their speculations lies in their oversight of the considera- 

 tions which lead to Idealism. If many of them regarded the 

 material world as a negation, it was an active negation ; not 

 zero, but a minus quantity. 



