152 HUXLEY 



the intellect of man," he sees no need to travel out- 

 side " the limits of the English tongue." For this 

 purpose " three authors will suffice, namely, Berkeley, 

 Hume, and Hobbes." To which select company 

 there may be added himself, with advice to master the 

 sixth volume of Collected Essays and the papers on 

 Descartes. 1 



A materialist, as commonly understood, holds that 

 the universe is made-up of matter, of which all forms 

 of activity, whether mechanical or spiritual, are prod- 

 ucts. The substance called matter is thus the sub- 

 stance of all things. This shallow view Huxley 

 wholly repudiated, but not without protest against the 

 vulgar idea of matter entertained by the majority of 

 persons. In an appendix to a paper on the " Meta- 

 physics of Sensation " he shows that what is loosely 

 and ignorantly spoken of as dead or inert and alto- 

 gether base — a notion due to Platonists and to the- 

 ologians, both of the East and West — throbs with 

 rhythmic movements of incredible rapidity, and is 

 charged with that element of true mystery wherein 

 wonder has its abiding source. 



The handful of soil is a factory thronged with 

 swarms of busy workers ; the rusty nail is an aggre- 

 gation of millions of particles moving with incon- 

 ceivable velocity in a dance of infinite complexity, 



1 Ib. t i. pp. 166-250. 



