66 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



forgotten as his predecessor, while the same bar- 

 ren platitudes will be echoed by some new writer 

 in the scientific phraseology then current. 



But there is another way of looking at material- 

 ism which makes it for a moment seem important, 

 and which serves to explain, though not to justify, 

 the alarm with which many excellent people con- 

 template the progress of modern science. A con- 

 spicuous characteristic of materialism is the en- 

 deavour to interpret mind as a product as the 

 transient result of a certain specific aggregation 

 of matter. To a person familiar with post-Berke- 

 leian psychology it seems clear that such an en- 

 deavour is quite hopeless, and that no such in- 

 terpretation of mind can ever be made. But a 

 multitude of very respectable readers, who are 

 not so profoundly conversant with metaphysics as 

 Spencer and Huxley, have taken it into their 

 heads that the doctrine of evolution is advancing 

 with rapid strides towards just such an interpre- 

 tation of mind ; and hence it is quite common to 

 allude to Spencer and Huxley as " materialists," 

 which, to my mind, is very much as if one were 

 to allude to Mr. Wendell Phillips as a distin- 

 guished pro-slavery orator. 



The mistake, however, is not unnatural when 

 we consider its causes. In point of fact the ter- 



