Practical Materialism 227 



greater, the further we go back in time and the lower the stage 

 of civilisatioa submitted to investigation. Historically, indeed, 

 there would seem to be an inverse relation between supernatural 

 and natural knowledge. As the latter has widened, gained in 

 precision and trustworthiness, so has the former shrunk, grown 

 vague and questionable ; as the one has more and more filled 

 the sphere of action, so has the other retreated into the region 

 of meditation, or vanished behind the screen of mere verbal 

 recognition. Whether this difference of the fortunes of Natural- 

 ism and Supernaturalism is an indication of the progress, or of 

 the regress of humanity, of a fall from or an advance towards 

 the higher life, is a matter of opinion. The point to which I 

 wish to direct attention is that the diflference exists and is mak- 

 ing itself felt. Men are growiug seriously alive to the fact that 

 the historical evolution of humanity, which is generally, and I 

 venture to think, not unreasonably, regarded as progress, has 

 been and is being accompanied by a co-ordinate elimination of 

 the supernatural from its originally large occupation of men's 

 thought." 



Every stage in this long process, every new attempt 

 to place physical phenomena in a chain of direct caus- 

 ation has been denounced as dangerous and degrading 

 materialism, and in this sense Huxley was not only 

 an adherent but one of the foremost champions of ma- 

 terialism. As everyone knows, some of the greatest 

 advances in this process of co-ordinating physical 

 phenomena were made during Huxley's life ; and his 

 vigorous onslaughts on those who tried to thwart all 

 attempts at material explanations in favour of unknown 

 agencies made him specially open to abusive criticism. 

 The battle was almost invariably between those who 

 had not special knowledge and those in possession of 

 it, and it occurred in practically the whole field of 

 science, but particularly in the biological sciences. A 

 single example will serve to shew what is meant by 

 materialism in this sense and the attitude of Huxley to 



