[aterialism 

 [at emit y 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



428 



are thus related is a mystery. And if I say 

 that thought is a property of matter, all 

 that I can mean is that, actually or possibly, 

 the consciousness of extension and that of 

 resistance accompany all other sorts of con- 

 sciousness. But, as in the former case, why 

 they are thus associated is an insoluble mys- 

 tery. From all this it follows that what I 

 may term legitimate materialism, that is, 

 the extension of the conceptions and of the 

 methods of physical science to the highest 

 as well as the lowest phenomena of vitality, 

 is neither more nor less than a sort of short- 

 hand idealism; and Descartes's two paths 

 meet at the summit of the mountain, tho 

 they set out on opposite sides of it. HUX- 

 LEY Lay Sermons, serm. 14, p. 340. (G. P. 

 P., 1899.) 



2095. MATERIALISM A TENDENCY 

 OF INDIVIDUAL MINDS Abstract Con- 

 ceptions Personified as Living Powers. We 

 can see how much and how little is really 

 meant when it is said that law can be traced 

 in all things, and all things can be traced to 

 law. It is a great mistake to suppose that, 

 in establishing this conclusion, the progress 

 of modern investigation is in a direction 

 tending to materialism. This may be and 

 always has been the tendency of individual 

 minds. There are men who would stare into 

 the very burning bush without a thought 

 that the ground on which they stand must 

 be holy ground. It is not now of wood or 

 stone that men make their idols, but of their 

 own abstract conceptions. Before these, 

 borrowing for them the attributes of per- 

 sonality, they bow down and worship. 

 ARGYLL Reign of Law, ch. 2, p. 67. (Burt.) 



2096. MATERIALISM BAFFLED BY 



CONSCIOUSNESS "You may say or 

 think that this [assumed] issue of con- 

 sciousness from the clash of atoms is not 

 more incongruous than the flash of light 

 from the union of oxygen and hydrogen. 

 But I beg to say that it is. For such incon- 

 gruity as the flash possesses is that which I 

 now force upon your attention. The ' flash ' 

 is an affair of consciousness, the objective 

 counterpart of which is a vibration. It is a 

 flash only by your interpretation. You are 

 the cause of the apparent incongruity; and 

 you are the thing that puzzles me. . . . 

 " Your difficulty, then, as I see you are 

 ready to admit, is quite as great as mine. 

 You cannot satisfy the human understand- 

 ing in its demand for logical continuity be- 

 tween molecular processes and the phe- 

 nomena of consciousness. This is a rock on 

 which materialism must inevitably split 

 whenever it pretends to be a complete phi- 

 losophy of life." [Supposed quotation from 

 Bishop Butler.] TYNDALL Fragments of 

 Science (the Belfast Address), vol. ii, ch. 9, 

 p. 168. (A., 1900.) 



2097. MATERIALISM CARRIED TO 

 LOGICAL RESULT Personality Obliterated 

 Reductio ad Absurdum. To comprehend 

 completely the consequences of the dogma so 



confidently enunciated, one should unflinch- 

 ingly apply it to the most complicated ex- 

 amples. The movements of our tongues and 

 pens, the flashings of our eyes in conversa- 

 tion, are of course events of a material or- 

 der, and as such their causal antecedents 

 must be exclusively material. If we knew 

 thoroughly the nervous system of Shake- 

 speare, and as thoroughly all his environing 

 conditions, we should be able to show why at 

 a certain period of his life his hand came to 

 trace on certain sheets of paper those crab- 

 bed little black marks which we for short- 

 ness's sake call the manuscript of " Hamlet." 

 We should understand the rationale of every 

 erasure and alteration therein, and we 

 should understand all this without in the 

 slightest degree acknowledging the existence 

 of the thoughts in Shakespeare's mind. The 

 words and sentences would be taken, not as 

 signs of anything beyond themselves, but as 

 little outward facts, pure and simple. In 

 like manner we might exhaustively write the 

 biography of those two hundred pounds, 

 more or less, of warmish albuminoid matter 

 called Martin Luther, without ever implying 

 that it felt. JAMES Psychology, vol. i, ch. 

 5, p., 132. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



2098. MATERIALISM CONFUSES 

 THINGS ESSENTIALLY UNLIKE Voice, 

 Man, and Brain Are Not the Thought. This 

 equating of mental process and brain func- 

 tion, which makes psychology a department 

 of cerebral physiology, and therefore a part 

 of a general atomic mechanics, sins against 

 the very first rule of scientific logic that 

 only those connections of facts may be re- 

 garded as causal which obtain between ge- 

 rierically similar phenomena. Our feelings, 

 thoughts, and volitions cannot be made ob- 

 jects of sensible perception. We can hear 

 the word which expresses the thought, we 

 can see the man who has thought it, we can 

 dissect the brain in which it arose; but the 

 word, the man, and the brain are not the 

 thought. And the blood which circulates in 

 the brain, the chemical changes which take 

 place there, are wholly different from the 

 act of thought itself. WUNDT Psychology, 

 lect. 1, p. 6. (Son. & Co., 1896.) 



2099. MATERIALISM GIVES HY- 

 POTHESES WITHOUT FACTS Brain 

 Function and Mental Activity Connected 

 Mental Force Assimilated to Light or 

 Electricity. There are numerous experi- 

 ences which put beyond all doubt the con- 

 nection of physiological cerebral function on 

 the one hand and of mental activity on the 

 other. And to investigate this connection by 

 means of experiment and observation is as- 

 suredly a task worth undertaking. But we 

 do not find that materialism, even in this 

 connection, has made a single noteworthy 

 contribution to our positive knowledge. It 

 has been content to set up baseless hypoth- 

 eses regarding the dependence of mental 

 function upon physical process; or it has 

 been concerned to refer the nature of mental 

 forces to some known physical agency. No 



