128 SCIENCE AND MORALS. m 



Before launching the three torpedoes which 

 have so sadly exploded on board his own ship, 

 Mr. Lilly says that with whatever " rhetorical or- 

 naments I may gild my teaching/' it is "Ma- 

 terialism." Let me observe, in passing, that rhe- 

 torical ornament is not in my way, and that gild- 

 ing refined gold would, to my mind, be less ob- 

 jectionable than varnishing the fair face of truth 

 with that pestilent cosmetic, rhetoric. If I be- 

 lieved that I had any claim to the title of " Ma- 

 terialist," as that term is understood in the lan- 

 guage of philosophy and not in that of abuse, I 

 should not attempt to hide it by any sort of gild- 

 ing. I have not found reason to care much for 

 hard names in the course of the last thirty years, 

 and I am too old to develop a new sensitiveness. 

 But, to repeat what I have more than once taken 

 pains to say in the most unadorned of plain lan- 

 guage, I repudiate, as philosophical error, the doc- 

 trine of Materialism as I understand it, just as 

 I repudiate the doctrine of Spiritualism as Mr. 

 Lilly presents it, and my reason for thus doing is, 

 in both cases, the same; namely, that, whatever 

 their differences. Materialists and Spiritualists 

 agree in making very positive assertions about 

 matters of which I am certain I know nothing, 

 and about which I believe they are, in truth, just 

 as ignorant. And further, that, even when their 

 assertions are confined to topics which lie within 

 the range of my faculties, they often appear to 



