128 SCIENCE AND MORALS ni 



thereby compelled to leave the safe ground of 

 personal knowledge. 



Before launching the three torpedoes which 

 have so sadly exploded on board his own ship, 

 Mr. Lilly says that with whatever " rhetorical 

 ornaments I may gild my teaching," it is 

 " Materialism." Let me observe, in passing, that 

 rhetorical ornament is not in my way, and that 

 gilding refined gold would, to my mind, be less 

 objectionable than varnishing the fair face of 

 truth with that pestilent cosmetic, rhetoric. If I 

 believed that I had any claim to the title of 

 " Materialist," as that term is understood in the 

 language of philosophy and not in that of abuse, I 

 should not attempt to hide it by any sort of gild- 

 ing. I have not found reason to care much for 

 hard names in the course of the last thirty years, 

 and I am too old to develop a new sensitiveness. 

 But, to repeat what I have more than once taken 

 pains to say in the most unadorned of plain 

 language, I repudiate, as philosophical error, the 

 doctrine of Materialism as I understand it, just as 

 I repudiate the doctrine of Spiritualism as Mr. 

 Lilly presents it, and my reason for thus doing is, 

 in both cases, the same ; namely, that, whatever 

 their differences, Materialists and Spiritualists 

 agree in making very positive assertions about 

 matters of which I am certain I know nothing, 

 and about which I believe they are, in truth, just 

 as ignorant. And further, that even when their 



