Criticism of Materialism 221 



one might declare our marble to be greeu ; and he would be 



quite as right iu saying that it is green as we are in declaring 



it to be red. But then, as the marble itself cannot be both J.'^ ^s^ ^-^ "^ 



green and red, at the same time, this shews that the quality '^ '^v^'v - 



redness must be in our consciousness and not in the marble." 



In similar fashion lie shewed that the hardness, round- 

 ness, and even the singleness of the marble were, so 

 far as we know, states of our consciousness and not in 

 the marble. The argtiment is capable of application to 

 all that we call matter, and it thus appears, on analysis, 

 that what we know of matter is simply a series of states 

 of otir consciousness, or mind. In similar fashion, it 

 ttirns out that what we call mind is, so far as practical 

 experience goes, always associated with and dependent 

 on what we call matter. We have no direct knowledge 

 of thinking without a brain, or of consciousness with- 

 out a body. Alterations and changes in matter, as for 

 instance in the tissues and nutrition of the body, are, so 

 far as our experience goes, inseparably associated with 

 mental operations. In the animal kingdom we see the 

 development of the mind creeping slowly after the de- 

 velopment of the material nervous system, until, in 

 man, the mo.st complex mind and most complex con- 

 sciousness of which we have knowledge accompany 

 the most complex body and brain. 



Two great rival solutions to this fundamental pro- 

 blem are Materialism and Idealism. Materialism sup- 

 po.ses that what we call matter is the real substance of 

 the universe, and that mind is merely one of the forms 

 of its activity. The advance of physical science has 

 done much to make the materialistic hypothesis more 

 plausible. When matter was believed to be inert, the 

 mere vehicle or theatre of forces, materialism remained 

 a singularly crude and unsatisfying position. But now 



