128 THE NEW PHYSIOLOGY. 



remarkable book, published this year by Professor 

 Pringle Pattison, of Edinburgh, and containing his 

 Gifford Lectures on The Idea of God. The fourth 

 chapter is entitled " The Liberating Influence of 

 Biology " ; and in it he points out the great importance 

 of biological advance on the lines which I have been 

 indicating, in delivering the world from what he rightly 

 calls " the bad dream of naturalism." 



Pringle Pattison's book is a singularly able and clearly 

 written statement of the philosophical position generally 

 known, for want of a better term, as idealism ; and 

 perhaps I need hardly say that it is idealism in its 

 applications to natural science that I have been preaching 

 to you to-night. Idealism in its modern form traces 

 its descent from Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. The 

 growth of the physical sciences in the preceding cen- 

 turies had led, and was steadily leading further, towards 

 the view that whatever somewhat shadowy reality there 

 may be apart from the material reality with which 

 physical science deals, there is at any rate no doubt 

 about this material reality. Bishop Berkeley and David 

 Hume pointed out, however, that if we start from the 

 assumption of this physical reality, including that of 

 our own bodies, we are led to the conclusion that all we 

 can know is made up of the " impressions " which the 

 material world makes upon us. We can have no direct 

 knowledge of the material world. We cannot even 

 know that it really exists ; and the world which seems 

 to our senses so clear and solid has therefore only a 

 subjective existence. Sensations or "impressions" are 

 thus the ultimate stuff out of which the whole world 

 of our experience is made. This was a complete turning 



