ON THE MATERIALISM OF ATOMS AND FORCES. 309 



view, and believes in a "real something which is the 

 cause of our impressions/' he is clearly not an idealist, 

 but a materialist if this real something* be matter, as at 

 first it appears to be. However, we are told that, even 

 if this view be accepted, we should be " still unable to 

 refute the arguments of pure idealism. The more com- 

 pletely the materialistic position is admitted, the easier 

 it is to show that the idealistic position is unassailable, 

 if the idealist confines himself within the limits of 

 possible knowledge." Here we have the choice between 

 idealism and materialism presented to us. But, as Pro- 

 fessor Huxley elsewhere admits that " our knowledge of 

 matter is restricted to those feelings of which we assume 

 it to be the cause," * it would not be difficult to show 

 that in reality he is at one with Kant and Spencer and 

 those who admit a something behind, different from 

 what we call matter and what we call mind. As he 

 speaks of "the unknown cause of sensation," which 

 Descartes calls the " je ne sais quoi dans les objets," and 

 Kant the " noumenon," or Ding-an-sich" f it is clear that 

 here is a something different from what we call matter, 

 and that he is neither a materialist nor an idealist, but 

 a believer in an unknown reality, the cause of all our 

 sensations. 



In spite, then, of the doctrine of evolution, and of 

 the conservation of energy, there is still a vacant space 

 left for Deity; not, indeed, for one endowed with the 

 customary anthropomorphic attributes, but for one all 

 the more transcendent for that very reason. Before the 



reason. We believe, indeed, that they will appear again, that the sun 

 will rise to-morrow ; this is an instinctive belief, engendered by custom ; 

 but for all that, this universe of shifting phenomena might, for aught 

 we know, collapse to-morrow, without leaving a wrack behind, not even 

 an impression or an idea, the only things he believed in. Hume is, in 

 fact, a nihilist in philosophy, and almost the only one. 



* Life of Hume, p. 81. t Ibid., p. 85. 



