A Crumb for the " Modern Symposium.'" 63 



ical suggestion I shall seek an excuse for recur- 

 ring here to what I have said more than once 

 already. 1 



From one point of view materialism may be 

 characterized as a system of opinions based on the 

 assumption that matter is the only real existence. 

 On this view the phenomena of conscious intelli- 

 gence are supposed to be explicable, as momentary 

 results of fleeting collocations of material parti- 

 cles, as when a discharge between two or more 

 cells of grey cerebral tissue is accompanied by 

 what we call a thought. It requires but little 

 effort to see that materialism, as thus defined, 

 does not comport well with the most advanced 

 philosophy of our time. Materialism of this sort 

 has plenty of defenders, no doubt, but not among 

 those who are skilled in philosophy. The un- 

 trained thinker, who believes that the group of 

 phenomena constituting the table on which he is 

 writing has an objective existence independent of 

 consciousness, will probably find no difficulty in 

 accepting this sort of materialism. If he is de- 

 voted to the study of nervous physiology, he will 

 be very likely to adopt some such crude notion, 

 and to proclaim it as zealously as if it were a very 

 important truth, calculated to promote, in many 



1 Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, ii. 79. 432-451. The Unseen World, 

 41, 53. 



