ism would not be correct, for it does not rest on reason ; indeed it is neither 
reasonable nor rational. Materialism would be equally inappropriate, and 
no disciple of Epicurus would admit that it at all resembled the doctrine to 
which he had given his adherence. Neither the hypotheses, nor the asser- 
tions, nor the prophecies of the materialist of the new, would be recognised 
or approved by one of the old school. Agnosticism, again, would be a 
complete misnomer, for the advocates of this new philosophy profess to know 
all things and to account for all the phenomena of nature. They tell us not 
only the origin but the end of all. Commencing with cosmic vapour, they 
trace the evolution of all non-living and living, and discern the further 
changes which are to progress through a distant future until all again 
eventuates in cosmic mist. Those who know all this can hardly be denomi- 
nated Agnostics. 
One grand central principle of this new philosophy seems to be the 
assumption that what is not now capable of proof, but is affirmed to be true 
by its exponents, will be proved to be true by new discoveries which we 
are assured will certainly be made at some future time by the scientific 
investigations of that period, — among which discoveries is to be the proof 
of the confident assertion now so often repeated, and considered to be a 
cardinal point, that the difference between a living thing and the same thing 
when it is dead, which difference seems to ordinary comprehension so very 
remarkable as to deserve to be called absolute and insurmountable, is but 
a difference in degree. The evidence in support of various conjectures con- 
cerning changes in the properties of material particles and alterations in the 
character and properties of living forms is also supposed to be forthcoming 
at some future time. Upon the fanciful basis thus constructed out of what 
may be discovered in the time to come is raised a strange and grotesque 
superstructure of philosophical speculation, contradiction, and inconsistency, 
perhaps the most curious ever presented for the acceptance and admiration 
of mankind. Amid all the vagaries of the intellect are to be noticed the 
most ardent belief in and superstitious reverence for future hypothetical 
revelations. 
Propositions which from their very nature must depend upon faith are 
rejected by the disciples of the new philosophy as unworthy of belief 
because they cannot be proved by observation, or put to the test of experi- 
ment, or the facts on which they rest be rendered evident to the sense of 
touch, sight, or hearing. On the other hand, things that have not been 
proved by observation, but which are within the limits of observation, 
which have not been demonstrated, but which would have been susceptible 
of demonstration had they really existed, are to be believed and at once 
accepted as literally true, because it has been affirmed by scientific teachers, 
who cannot possibly err, that all things and all phenomena are unquestion- 
ably due to the operation of laws of matter about to be discovered, 
and because certain views concerning things in general, and living things in 
particular, have been accepted by the established intellectual authority of 
the time, from whose decision there is no appeal. 
