BUT NOT THEREFORE INFIDELITY. 269 



" It is lamentable that the last, and certainly most 

 philosophical view of the question, should have been 

 allowed by the intemperance of some of its partisans 

 to involve influences which have rendered the word 

 materialism hateful to all pious men, and gained for its 

 advocates the title of philosophers, at the expense of 

 one which should have been much dearer to them" 

 (iii. p. 95). 



And the grand principle by which the legitimate 

 and scientific meaning of materialism is separated from 

 the unwarrantable use of the word as synonymous 

 with religious infidelity, is simply the strict separation 

 of the ideas of life and mind from that of the immortal 

 soul, and the humble acknowledgment of our sole 

 dependence on miraculous revelation for all our know- 

 ledge of what appertains to the future life of man. I 

 cannot do better than quote the whole passage from 

 Fletcher in explanation of these views : 



" JSfor is this view of the matter, as is sometimes 

 vaguely supposed, in any degree hostile to, or incon- 

 sistent with, the purest and loftiest religion. The 

 hackneyed arguments against this opinion, founded 

 upon its supposed immoral tendency and impiety, 

 appear to proceed upon the principle, certainly erro- 

 neous, that the mind and soul are identical. Who, that 

 has watched for five minutes the action of a dog, can 

 be so blinded as to deny that he possesses attention, 

 imagination, abstraction, judgment, desire, grief in 

 short, all the intellectual faculties and passions, in the 

 display of which thought consists, but who will 

 attribute to him an immortal soul ? The existence of 

 such a substance, attached during life to the body of 



