PART II 



THE SECOND (PHILOSOPHICAL) ISSUE ; OR, THE ESCAPE FROM 

 MATERIALISM THROUGH THE MODERN IDEALISM OF 

 IGNORANCE. 



IN his necessity to say something, if only for " his own," Mr 

 Huxley, in reference to my phrase " the materialism he 

 would found on it," remarks, " one great object of my Essay 

 was to show that what is called * materialism ' has no sound 

 philosophical basis ! " The note of admiration I retain here is 

 Mr Huxley's own, and I am humbly of opinion that it is more 

 in place at the end of my sentence than at the end of his. At 

 the end of his, namely, it intimates indignation "that an express 

 effort to resist, should be treated as an express effort, to found, 

 materialism. At the end of mine, again, it intimates surprise 

 that Mr Huxley should seek to hide his alpha beneath his beta, 

 and upbraid me for openly signalising alpha alone, whereas I 

 equally openly signalised beta though placing it on one side. 

 If Mr Huxley does two things namely attempts, first, to set 

 up materialism, attempts, second, to knock down materialism 

 (see pages 20, 21, 23) how can allusion to the materialism 

 he sets up, guarded by an equal allusion to the materialism he 

 knocks down, be an " utter misreprentation ? " " One great 

 object of my Essay," says Mr Huxley ! Yes, truly; but what of 

 the other great, greater, and greatest object? "Utter mis- 

 representation ! " The only utter misrepresentation concerned 

 here is Pshaw ! the whole thing is beneath speech. 



Nevertheless, my previous, merely parenthetic, treatment of 

 Mr Huxley's second issue shall now be completed by a con- 

 sideration in detail. We are to understand, then, that what Mr 

 Huxley claimed to have effected (physiologically) in fifty 

 paragraphs for materialism, he now claims equally to effect 

 (philosophically) in one-and-twenty against it ; and the means 

 to this are " the principles which the Archbishop of York holds 

 up to reprobation." These, as it is easy to know, concern the 

 so-called " limits of philosophical inquiry," and may be reduced 

 to what Mr Huxley holds to be our three ignorances: our 

 ignorance, namely, first, of cause; second, of substance; and, 



