MATTER AND SPIRIT 



kein Gedanke. This formula has been caught up 

 as a watchword by a school of atheistic writers, 

 some of whom, as Moleschott and Vogt, rank 

 very high as scientific specialists, but none of 

 whom seem to be worthy of mention for psy- 

 chological capacity or for acquaintance with the 

 best thoughts of modern philosophy. The most 

 conspicuous representative of this school is Dr. 

 Biichner — a writer who deserves praise for his 

 power of lucid exposition, but whose pages are 

 too often deformed with brutalities of expression 

 for which no atonement is made in the shape 

 of original or valuable thought. Although this 

 writer has no scientific reputation whatever, and 

 although his school has no more claim to rank 

 with the great schools of philosophy in our 

 time than it had when the now forgotten La- 

 mettrie represented it in the days of Hume and 

 Kant, yet through loudness of asseveration it 

 has succeeded in doing much to mislead and 

 perplex the public mind with reference to the 

 philosophic results of recent scientific inquiry. 

 Because Dr. Biichner and his followers point to 

 certain discoveries in nervous physiology or in 

 transcendental physics as evidence of the ma- 

 teriality of mind, it has come to be currently 

 supposed that those scientific inquirers who ac- 

 cept the discoveries accept also the materialistic 

 inference. And because the ablest scientific in- 

 quirers, being more occupied in hunting for 

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