COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



hand, those persons are popularly called mate- 

 rialists who allow their actions to be guided by 

 the desires of the moment without reference to 

 any such rule of right living as is termed a 

 " high ideal of life." Persons who worship no- 

 thing but worldly success, who care for nothing 

 but wealth, or fashionable display, or personal 

 celebrity, or sensual gratification, are thus loosely 

 called materialists. The term can therefore eas- 

 ily be made to serve as a poisoned weapon, and 

 there are theologians who do not scruple to em- 

 ploy it as such against the upholders of philoso- 

 phic opinions which they do not like but are 

 unable to refute. A most flagrant instance was 

 recently afforded by a lecturer on Positivism, 

 who, after insinuating that pretty much the 

 whole body of contemporary scientific philoso- 

 phers are Positivists, and that Positivists are 

 but very little better than materialists, pro- 

 ceeded to inform his audience that " material- 

 ists " are men who lead licentious lives. 



It would be hard to find words strong enough 

 to characterize the villainy of such misrepresen- 

 tations as this could we fairly suppose them to 

 be deliberately intended. They would imply 

 extreme moral turpitude, were it not that they 

 are so obviously the product of extreme sloven- 

 liness of thinking joined with culpable careless- 

 ness of assertion. The chain of ill-conceived 

 arguments upon which they depend is some- 

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