14 The Scope and Principles 



on some other planet, like the resident of Saturn imagined 

 in the satire of Voltaire, with seventy senses instead of 

 five to whom the universe would present an appearance 

 quite unfamiliar and incomprehensible to our understand- 

 ing. To the old and ingenious play upon words involved 

 in the familiar and brief philosophical catechism: "What 

 is Matter ? Never mind. What is Mind ? No matter. 

 What is the nature of the soul ? It is perfectly imma- 

 terial," science and evolution, therefore, enter an em- 

 phatic protest. Matter, it declares, is the Unknowable 

 Reality as reflected in mind through the mediation of the 

 senses. Mind is that Reality as it appears directly in the 

 operations of consciousness. It is, so far as we know, insep- 

 arable from material conditions ; but it is a false logic which 

 therefore infers that it is itself material. You can neither 

 see, feel, smell, taste, weigh, measure, nor chemically de- 

 compose a thought. It responds to no material tests. Yet 

 in it lies a power greater than that of the Archimedean 

 lever a power sufficient to move the world. Of a soul 

 distinct from mind and form, science knows absolutely 

 nothing ; but since it also knows nothing of the nature of 

 the Absolute Reality of which mind and form are manifes- 

 tations, no divine possibility is slain by this admission. 

 Materialism and Idealism both err in assuming that knowl- 

 edge is absolute instead of relative. Both declare that the 

 universe is just what it appears to be to our senses re- 

 fusing, like the Electoral Commission, to " go behind the 

 returns " and investigate the actual character of the suf- 

 frage. Materialism assumes that matter is the mould of 

 consciousness ; Idealism, that consciousness is the mould 

 of matter. The truth lies between the two extremes, in- 

 cluding what is true in both. 



The error of Materialism is cruder and more easily 

 refuted than that of Idealism ; in view of the testimony of 

 science as to the nature of our sense-perception, it has not 

 a foot to stand upon. In declaring that the Reality which 

 is external to our consciousness is identical and cotermi- 

 nous with that which we know as matter, it bases its whole 

 philosophy on an unverified and unverifiable assumption 

 which is contradicted by the entire testimony of science. 

 Rut in assuming that there is no Absolute Reality external 

 to consciousness. Idealism is equally metaphysical and un- 

 scientific. The question in reality is simply one of physi- 



