APPENDIX 



NOTE A (p. 249.). 



THE horror of "Materialism " which weighs upon the minds 

 of so many excellent people appears to depend, in part, upon the 

 purely accidental connexion of some forms of materialistic philo- 

 sophy with ethical and religious tenets by which they are 

 repelled ; and, partly, on the survival of a very ancient supersti- 

 tion concerning the nature of matter. 



This superstition, for the tenacious vitality of which the 

 idealistic philosophers who are, more or less, disciples of Plato 

 and the theologians who have been influenced by them, are 

 responsible, assumes that matter is something, not merely inert 

 and perishable, but essentially base and evil-natured, if not 

 actively antagonistic to, at least a negative dead-weight upon, 

 the good. Judging by contemporary literature, there are 

 numbers of highly cultivated and indeed superior persons to 

 whom the material world is altogether contemptible ; who can 

 see nothing in a handful of garden soil, or a rusty nail, but 

 types of the passive and the corruptible. 



To modern science, these assumptions are as much out of date 

 as the equally venerable errors, that the sun goes round the 

 earth every four-and-twenty hours, or that water is an elemen- 

 tary body. The handful of soil is a factory thronged with 

 swarms of busy workers ; the rusty nail is an aggregation of 

 millions of particles, moving with inconceivable velocity in 

 a dance of infinite complexity yet perfect measure ; harmonic 

 with like performances throughout the solar system. If there is 

 good ground for any conclusion, there is such for the belief that 



