360 The Philosophy of Evolution. 



Friends of the spiritual philosophies who exhort us to 

 think more of their vague propositions, and to devote our- 

 selves to God, immortality and duty, should reflect upon 

 the awful miseries which befell those who formerly were 

 devoted to such pursuits, neglecting their bodies and worldly 

 interests the while, till a horror of great confusion overtook 

 them like a flood, and swept them down the wreck-filled 

 current to ignorance and death. There has never been a 

 better age than the present, since man has written history ; 

 and the simple reason is that man has now become materi- 

 alistic in his aims, — has turned from the bloodless spectres 

 which he formerly pursued to active care for mere flesh and 

 blood, to houses and lands and inventions and enterprises 

 and splendor and display, and whatever makes life more 

 fruitful and more abundant in material goods. 



Materialism, which is represented as a flood that threatens 

 to drown all higher impulses, proves to be rather a Nile- 

 inundation, whose waters bear the fertilization of humanity. 

 And yet medievalists would have us return to the dreary 

 pursuits of the spirit, where men wandered for centuries 

 living on manna and water ! 



The opponents of Materialism, in their devotion to spirit- 

 ual philosophies, display many curious moral obliquities cal- 

 culated to impair a mere materialist's confidence in their prin- 

 ciples ; — as where we see them eager to sacrifice hekatombs 

 of other men, and human welfare, to the establishment of 

 their ideal visions. Look, for instance, at the idealist, 

 Tennyson, who voices in his " In Memoriam " the tenderest 

 and most reverent sentiment of the age respecting God, 

 duty and immortality, and afterwards lets himself rave, in 

 " Maud," to praise and glorify the multitudes of blameless 

 youth slain in that worthless and even then antiquated bar- 

 barity, the Crimean War, — because " Gods's just wrath would 

 be wreaked on a giant liar," and "a peace that was full of 

 wrongs and shames " broken up in the awful carnage of 

 battle. As if we should say it is better for men to kill 

 each other in rage and hatred than to cheat each other for 

 gain. As if murder was not by far the greater crime ! — 

 even if one does call it war and treat it to the luxury of 

 poetry. Materialism looks at things quite differently and 

 does not exhort us to begin killing men as a better pursuit 

 than cheating them. Materialism has its faults, but it 



