FORMS OF ATTACK 21 



expected ; and to refuse to consider the evidence of their 

 occurrence is to dogmatize concerning a plan which 

 confessedly is more comprehensive than can be ex- 

 hibited by natural science.^ 



(c) This distinction between the natural and the 

 supernatural is necessarily repudiated by pantheists. 

 But my emphasis upon it at this point ^ has particular 

 reference to another form of opposition to Christian 

 doctrine. I refer to naturalism, the very name of which 

 implies a refusal to allow for the supernatural factor 

 in the history of the universe and of man. It is this 

 form of opposition that demands especial considera- 

 tion in connection with the subject-matter of these 

 lectures. Briefly defined, naturaHsm maintains that 

 all knowable realities are physical and mechanical, and 

 are to be described and interpreted in exclusively me-j 

 chanical terms. Formerly, Professor James Ward tells 1 

 us, "naturalism tended dogmatically to deny the exist- 

 ence of things divine or spiritual, and dogmatically' 

 to assert that matter was the one absolute reality." 

 That is, naturalism meant materialism pure and 

 simple. But the materialistic position has become 

 less and less tenable as the range of scientific inquiry 

 has widened so as to include a more adequate study of 

 the phenomena of Hfe and of mind. The supporters 

 of naturalism have accordingly somewhat shifted their 



1 The author's argument as to the supernatural is more largely 

 given in Introd. to Dog. TheoL, ch. ii. 



2 An emphasis which will be necessary to repeat at later stages in 

 the general argument of these lectures. See especially Lee. v. Pt. 

 III. 



