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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are equally vain and premature; and 

 they will also perceive that science 

 gives no better warrant for the " re- 

 ligion" to which Romanes has been 

 led than it gives for the " atheism " 

 w T hich he has outgrown. We hope 

 his fascinating book will find many 

 readers, for it will give them the 

 pleasure which is found in all strong 

 and vivid works of the imagination; 

 although we refrain from detailed 

 discussion of its ingenious argu- 

 ments, for the reason that we are 

 sure no thoughtful student can mis- 

 take it for a contribution to knowl- 

 edge. 



If certain enthusiastic students of 

 Nature have been carried away into 

 materialism by the triumphs which 

 modern science has achieved through 

 the use of the symbolism of matter 

 and motion, they can not complain 

 that there has been any lack of warn- 

 ing. The most profound and cau- 

 tious thinkers of our century have 

 never ceased to insist that our con- 

 ceptions of matter and motion are 

 nothing more than symbols ; and 

 that, so far as knowledge of any 

 reality behind them is concerned, 

 they might as well be called x and 

 y. General recognition of this truth 

 is now producing a reaction which 

 seems, to these zealous believers, to 

 drive them out of their materialism 

 into some other system of philosophy ; 

 but before they rush from one ex- 

 treme to another, they should ask 

 themselves whether this revolution 

 will bring them any nearer to the 

 solid rock of certainty than they 

 were before. No one who is famil- 

 iar with the work of our greatest in- 

 tellectual leaders can find anything 

 novel in Romanes's declaration that 

 " when we speak of matter in mo- 

 tion we do not at all know what it is 

 that moves, nor do we know at all 

 what it is that we mean by motion " ; 

 although we must ask the followers 

 of Romanes whether we know any- 



thing more about the essence of 

 mind than we know about the es- 

 sence of matter, and whether we can 

 say anything more of our men- 

 tal changes than that " they ap- 

 pear together, but we do not know 

 why." 



Prof. Ostwald tells us in his ad- 

 dress on k ' The Failure of Scientific 

 Materialism"* that "every scientific 

 thinker, from the mathematician to 

 the practicing physician, would sum 

 up his view, in answer to the question 

 how he supposes the world is intrin- 

 sically constituted, by saying that 

 the universe is composed of atoms in 

 motion, and that the atoms and the 

 forces acting between them are the 

 ultimate realities of which individual 

 phenomena consist. " Whatever the 

 German frame of mind may be, we 

 are disposed to believe that many 

 Englishmen and Americans, if asked 

 "What are the ultimate realities of 

 which individual phenomena con- 

 sist ? " would answer that they do not 

 know. We believe there would be no 

 difficulty in finding many eminent 

 men of science who have refused to 

 have anything more to do with ma- 

 terialism than to make use of its 

 symbols, so far as they have proved 

 useful. So long ago as 1868, Huxley 

 tells us f that he shares with some of 

 the most thoughtful men with whom 

 he is acquainted the union of mate- 

 rialistic terminology with the repu- 

 diation of materialistic philosophy; 

 that he individually is no materialist, 

 but, on the contrary, believes mate- 

 rialism to involve grave philosophi- 

 cal error. Ostwald seems to have 

 come, somewhat late in the day, to 

 the point of view from which Hux- 

 ley's most thoughtful acquaintances 

 contemplated materialism in 1868 ; 

 but, unlike Huxley, he proposes a 

 substitute, and seeks to show that 



* See translation in Popular Science Monthly 

 for March, 1896. 



+ Collected Essays, I, iii, 155. 



