36 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
metaphysical spectre of a vital power, or empty theological 
dogma. If we can prove that all nature, so far as it can be 
known, is only one, that the same “great, eternal, iron 
laws” are active in the life of animals and plants, as in 
the growth of crystals and in the force of steam, we may 
with reason maintain the monistic or mechanical view 
of things throughout the domain of Biolory—in Zoology and 
Botany—whether it be stigmatized as “materialism” or not. 
In such a sense all exact science, and the law of cause and 
effect at its head, is purely materialistic. 
Moral, or ethical Materialism, is something quite distinct 
from scientific materialism, and has nothing whatever in 
common with the latter. This real materialism proposes 
no other aim to man in the course of his life than 
the most refined possible gratification of his senses. It is. 
based on the delusion that purely material enjoyment 
ean alone give satisfaction to man; but as he can find that 
satisfaction in no one form of sensuous pleasure, he dashes on 
weariedly from one to another. The profound truth that the 
real value of life does not lie in material enjoyment, but in 
moral action—that true happiness does not depend upon 
external possessions, but only in a virtuous course of life— 
this is unknown to ethical materialism. We therefore look 
in vain for such materialism among naturalists and phi- 
losophers, whose highest happiness is the intellectual 
enjoyment of Nature, and whose highest aim is the know- 
ledge of her laws. We find it in the palaces of ecclesi- 
astical princes, and in those hypocrites who, under the 
outward mask of a pious worship of God, solely aim at 
hierarchical tyranny over, and material spoliation of, their. 
fellow-men. Blind to the infinite grandeur of the so-called 
