158 OX THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE TIT 



French writer of fifty years later date, in whose 

 dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the vigour 

 of thought and the exquisite clearness of style of 

 the man whom I make bold to term the most 

 acute thinker of the eighteenth century even 

 though that century produced Kant. 



But I did not come to Scotland to vindicate the 

 honour of one of the greatest men she has ever 

 produced. My business is to point out to you 

 that the only way of escape out of the " crass 

 materialism" in which we just now landed, is the 

 adoption and strict working-out of the very 

 principles which the Archbishop holds up to 

 reprobation. 



Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and 

 fiot relative, and therefore, that our conception of 

 "^/matter represents that which it really is. Let us 

 suppose, further, that we do know more of cause 

 v ,And effect than a certain definite order of succession 

 among facts, and that we have a knowledge of the 

 necessity of that succession and hence, of neces- 

 sary laws and I, for my part, do not see what 

 escape there is from utter materialism and neces- 

 sarianism. For it is obvious that our knowledge 

 of what we call the material world is, to begin 

 with, at least as certain and definite as that of the 

 /spiritual world, and that our acquaintance with law 

 is of as old a date as our knowledge of spontaneity. 

 Further, I take it to Tbe demonstrable that it is 

 utterly impossible to prove that anything what- 



