35 



In itself it is of little momant whether we express the 

 phenomena of matter in terms of spirit, or the phenomena 

 of spirit in terms of matter ; matter may be regarded as 

 a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a property 

 of matter each statement has a certain relative truth. 

 But with a view to the progress of science, the material- 

 istic terminology is in every way to be preferred. For it 

 connects thought with the other phenomena of the uni- 

 verse, and suggests inquiry into the nature of those physi- 

 ical conditions or concomitants of thought, which are 

 more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which 

 may, in future, help us to exercise the same kind of con- 

 trol over the world of thought as we already possess in 

 respect of the material world ; whereas, the alternative, 

 or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads 

 to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas. Thus 

 there can be little doubt that the further science ad- 

 vances, the more extensively and consistently will all the 

 phenomena of nature be represented by materialistic 

 formulae and symbols. But the man of science, who, 

 forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from 

 these formulae and symbols into what is commonly un- 

 derstood by materialism, seems to me to place himself 

 on a level with the mathematician, who should mistake 

 the x's and fs, with which he works his problems, for 

 real entities and with this further disadvantage as com- 

 pared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the 

 latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors 

 of systematic materialism may paralyze the energies ancj 

 destroy the beauty of a life, 



