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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 34

[introduction]

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At the beginning of October, 1874, it was my duty, as Principal of a Theological College, to open a new session with an Address, which was afterwards published under the title, "Religion as affected by Modern Materialism." It raises the question whether the free and scientific methods of study insisted on in the College involved results at variance with its theological design. It states accordingly three assumptions hitherto implied in that design: "That the universe which includes us and folds us round is the life-dwelling of an Eternal Mind; that the world of our abode is the scene of a Moral Government incipient but not yet complete; and that the upper zones of human affection, above the clouds of self and passion, take us into the sphere of a Divine Communion." With regard to these assumptions the thesis is maintained that they are beyond the contradiction, because not within the logical range, of the natural sciences. In support of this thesis the mischiefs are shown, both to science and to theology, of confusing their boundaries, and treating the discovery of Law as the negation of God; and the separating line is drawn, that in their intellectual dealings with phenomena, science inves- page 4 tigates the "how" and theology the "whence." Tempted on by two of its indispensable conceptions, matter and force, science, overstepping this boundary, has of late affected to know not only the order but the origin of things; in the one case starting them from atoms as their source, in the other from mechanical energy. I try to show that neither datum will work out its result except by the aid of logical illusions. You will get out of your atoms by "evolution," exactly so much and no more as you have put into them by hypothesis. And with regard to force, it is contended that observation and induction do not carry us to it at all, but stop with movements; that the so-called kinds of force are only classes of phenomena, with the constant belief of causality behind; that of causality we have no cognition but as Will, from which the idea of "physical force" is simply cut down by artificial abstraction to the needs of phenomenal investigation and grouping; and that, in conceiving of the single power hid in every group, we must revert to the intuitive type, because the only authorized, and to the highest, because alone covering the highest phenomena. The attempt, under shelter of the unity of energy behind all its masks, to make the lowest phase, besides playing its own part, stand for the whole, is described as a logical sleight of hand by which a heedless reasoner may impose upon himself and others.

After this defensive argument to show that the religious positions are not displaced by natural science, they are traced to their real seat in human nature, and treated as postulates involved in the very existence and life of the reason and conscience. In support of their natural claim to our entire trust, it is contended that, for their ethical power, they are absolutely dependent on their objective truth; and further, that our nature, in respect of its higher page 5 affections, compassion, self-forgetfulness, moral obligation, is constructed in harmony with a world Divinely ruled, and in utter conflict with the Pessimist's picture of nature.

The Address thus epitomized has brought upon me the honour and the danger of a critique by Professor Tyndall,* marked by all his literary skill, and rendered persuasive by happy sarcasm and brilliant description. One fault at least he brings home to me with irresistible conviction. He blames my mode of writing as deficient in precision and lucidity. And I cannot deny the justice of the censure when I observe that my main line of argument has left no trace upon his memory, that its estimate of scientific doctrines is misconstrued, that my feeling towards the order of nature is exhibited in reverse, that I am cross-questioned about an hypothesis of which I never dreamt, and am answered by a charming "alternative" exposition of ascending natural processes, which I follow with assent till it changes its voice from physics to metaphysics, and from its premisses of positive phenomena proclaims a negative ontological conclusion. That at every turn I should have put so acute a reader upon a totally false scent, rebukes me more severely than any of his direct and pertinent criticisms; for, smartly as these may hit me, they fall chiefly on incidental and parenthetical remarks which might have been absent, or on mere literary form which might have been different, without affecting the purport of my Address. Whether the force of these minor thrusts is really disabling, or is only a by-play telling mainly on the fancy of the observer, a brief scrutiny will determine.

(1.) In saying that the College which I represent leaves open to all new lights of knowledge "the special studies

* Fragments of Science: "Materialism" and its Opponents; and, previously, Fortnightly Review, November 1, 1875.

page 6 which deal with our sources of religious faith," I expanded this phrase by the words, "whether in the scrutiny of nature or in the interpretation of sacred books." This innocent parenthesis, which simply summarizes the growing-grounds of all actual theology, produces in my critic an effect out of all proportion to its significance. Twice he challenges me to show how any "religious faith" can be drawn from "nature," which I regard, he says, as "base and cruel." It suffices to say that "scrutiny of nature "does not exclude "human nature," wherein the springs of religion are afterwards traced to their intuitive seats; and that, in what are called my "tirades against nature" as "base and cruel," I am describing, not my own view of the order of the world, but one which I repudiate as utterly sickly and perverse. Then, again, I am asked how, after giving up the Old Testament cosmogony, I can any longer speak of "sacred books," without informing my readers where to find them. I have occasionally met with scientific men whose ideas about the Bible, if going further than the Creation, came to an end at the Flood, and who thought it only loyal to Laplace and Lyell thenceforth to shelve "Moses and the prophets:" but a judgment so borné I should not expect from Professor Tyndall. Can a literature then have nothing "sacred," unless it be infallible? Has the religion of the present no roots in the soil of the past, so that nothing is gained for our spiritual culture by exploring its history and reproducing its poetry, and ascending to the tributary waters of its life? The real modern discovery, far from saying there is no sacred literature, because none oracular, assures us there are several; and, notwithstanding a deepened because purified attachment to our own "Origines" in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, persuades us to look with an open reverence into all writ- page 7 ings that have embodied and sustained the greater pieties of the world. But to my censor it appears a thing incredible that I should find a sanctity in anything human; or deem it possible to approach religion in its truth by intercepting its errors as it percolates through history, and letting it flow clearer and clearer, till it brings a purifying baptism to the conscience of our time.

(2.) In order to give distinctness to that "religion" in relation to which I proposed to treat of "Modern Materialism," I specified "three assumptions" involved in it, of which the first and chief is the existence of the "Living God." I am reproached with making no attempt to verify them, but permitting them to "remain assumptions" "to the end." Be it so, though the statement is not quite exact: still, in every reasoned discourse assumptions have their proper place, as well as proofs; and the right selection of propositions to stand in the one position or the other depends on the speaker's thesis and the hearer's needs. My thesis was, that natural science did not displace these assumptions, because they lie beyond its range; and the proof is complete if it is shown that the logical limit of inductive knowledge stops short of their realm, and is illegitimately overstepped by every physical maxim which contradicts them. To turn aside from this line of argument in order to "verify" the primary matter of the whole discussion, would have been to set out for Exeter and arrive at York. My hearers consisted of the teachers, supporters and alumni of a Theological College; and to treat them as a body of atheists, and offer proofs of the being of a God, would have been as impertinent as for Professor Tyndall to open the session of a Geological Society with a demonstration of the existence of the earth.

(3.) A few reluctant words must suffice in answer to the page 8 charge of "scorning the emotions." I say "reluctant words:" for to this side of our nature it is given to speak without being much spoken of; to live and be, rather than be seen and known; and when dragged from its retreat, it is so hurt as to change its face and become something else. Here, however, little more is needed than to repeat the words which are pronounced to be so "rash" and even "petulant"—"I trust that when 'emotion proves empty, we shall stamp it out and get rid of it." Do I then "scorn" the "emotion" of any mind stirred by natural vicissitudes or moving realities—the cry of Andromache, Greek quote at the first sight of her hero's dishonoured corpse; the covered face and silent sobs of Phædon, when Socrates had drained the cup; the tears of Peter at the cock-crowing; or any of the fervent forms of mental life—the mysticism of Eckhart, the intellectual enthusiasm of Bruno, the patriotic passion of Vane? Not so; for none of these are "empty," but carry a meaning adequate to their intensity. It is for "emotion" with a vacuum within, and floating in vacuo without, charged with no thought and directed to no object, that I avow distrust; and if there be an "overshadowing awe" from the mere sense of a blank consciousness and an enveloping darkness, I can see in it no more than the negative condition of a religion yet to come. In human psychology, feeling, when it transcends sensation, is not without idea, but is a type of idea; and to suppose "an inward hue and temperature," apart from any "object of thought," is to feign the impossible. Colour must lie upon form; and heat must spring from a focus, and declare itself upon a surface. If by referring religion to the region of emotion" is meant withdrawing it from the region of truth, and letting it pass into an undulation in no medium and with no direction, I must decline the surrender.

page 9

In thus refusing support from "empty emotion," I am said to "kick away the only philosophic foundation on which it is possible to build religion." Professor Tyndall is certainly not exacting from his builders about the solidity of his "foundation;" and it can be only a very light and airy architecture, not to say an imaginary one, that can spring from such base; and perhaps it does not matter that it should be unable to face the winds. Nor is the inconsistency involved in this statement less surprising than its levity. Religion, it appears, has a "philosophical foundation." But "philosophy" investigates the ultimate ground of cognition and the organic unity of what the several sciences assume. And a "philosophical foundation" is a legitimated first principle for some one of these; it is a cognitive beginning—a datum of ulterior quæsita—and nothing but a science can have it. Religion then must be an organism of thought. Yet it is precisely in denial of this that my censor invents his new "foundation." Here, he tells us, we know nothing, we can think nothing; the intellectual life is dumb and blank; we do but blindly feel. How can a structure without truth repose on philosophy in its foundation?

But do I not myself carry religious questions, in the last appeal, to the inward consciousness of man, whether intellectual for the interpretation of causality, or moral for the interpretation of duty? Undoubtedly; and Professor Tyndall thinks it "highly instructive" that I "should have lived so long, thought so much, and failed to recognize the entirely subjective character of this creed." If I may omit the word "entirely" (which implies a gratuitous exclusion of "objective truth"), I not only recognize it, but everywhere insist upon it. The fundamental religious conceptions have no deeper validity than belongs. to the very page 10 frame of our faculties and the postulates of our thinking. But as this equally holds of the fundamental scientific conceptions, as matter and force have also to retire to consciousness for their witnesses—nay, as objectivity itself is but an interpretation by the subject of its own experience, is it not "highly instructive" that a critic so compassionate of my "subjective" position should be unaware of the ideality of his own? Or has he, perhaps, found some "objective knowledge" which has not to fall back upon a "subjective" guarantee?

If, as I suspect, Professor Tyndall uses the word "subjective," not in its strict sense, for what belongs to the human subject at large, but to denote what is special to the feeling of this or that individual, the question will then be whether I mistake an exceptional personal experience for a universal form of thought. This question is not settled by saying that many able men find in themselves no such inner experience. The eye for correct psychological reading is not secured by great intellect or noble character, but, like the organ of any other art, must be trained to quickness and delicacy of insight; and, while false or over-culture exposes it to the danger of seeing what is not there, a failure of culture may prevent its seeing what there is. Eight interrogation and careful comparison alone can sift out the essential from the accidental. Doubtless many a principle once advanced as self-evident and universal survives only in the grotesque museum of philosophers' fancies. But, on the other hand, whatever laws of thought are now admitted as universal were at first propounded, and often long resisted, as the expressions of individual reflection.

(4.) On one point more a personal éclainissement is needed as a condition of any profitable argument. I am said to be "imperfectly informed regarding the position I page 11 assail." If I am sensitive to this remark, it is not that I cannot bear to be reminded of my ignorance, the sense of which is a shadow that never quits my life, but that, as no man has a right to attack doctrines which he has not taken the pains to understand, the statement carries in it a moral imputation, and calls on me either to clear it away or to confess a wrong. What then is the "position" which, under the name of "materialism," I intended to assail, and ought, perhaps, to have fixed by exact definition? Professor Tyndall supposes it to be his position, regarding which undoubtedly I am very imperfectly informed; for the indications of it, though clear enough for assent or criticism when taken one by one, appear to me so shifting and indeterminate in their combination, as to afford no means of testing it. Except in the two or three passages where it is quoted, the Belfast Address was no more in my view than the writings to which it referred and others belonging to the literature of the subject; and did not supply the form of doctrine to which my argument was addressed. The only question therefore is whether that form of doctrine really exists. If it can be shown that I have misconceived the materialists' position, and fastened upon them any thesis which is without eminent representative in their school, I must accept my rebuke. But if no part of my sketch is unsupported by adequate authority, it will remain true, though it should conflict with sentences in the "Fragments of Science."

Probably the chief instance of "imperfect information" is this—that I suppose the materialist doctrine to be offered as an explanation of the order of things; for my censor contrasts with this "travesty" of the scheme his own statement, that the materialist's "molecular groupings and movements in reality explain nothing," and that "the page 12 utmost he can affirm is the association of two classes of phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in absolute ignorance." But surely, if this is all that he can affirm, he gives his materialism nothing to do, and is as well off without it as with it: in order simply to see that two series of phenomena run parallel, and correspond term for term, he needs no more than methodized observation, possible and identical on every theory or no theory about the substratum of the phenomena. If the human mind could be content with this spectacle of unexplained concomitance, the very impulse would be wanting from which materialism has sprung. Its fundamental proposition, common, as Lange remarks, to all its forms, ancient and modern—"that the universe consists of atoms and empty space"*—is an hypothesis devised for the express purpose of establishing a "bond of union" between lines of succession previously detached—i. e. of giving the mind a bridge of passage other than that of "association" from the one to the other—i. e. of explaining the second by the first. An hypothesis commends itself to us when (inter alia) it offers a higher conception from which, as an assumption, we can deduce both sets of previously separate facts; and so far as it fails to do this, it is self-condemned. There may be other defects in hypotheses; but if their data do not logically lead to the quæsita, they break their primary promise; and to see whether they are watertight throughout, or are leaky at the joints, is an efficient test of their pretensions. A materialist who knows what he is about would not disown the words which I put into his mouth—"Matter is all I want; give me its atoms alone, and I will explain the universe"—but would assuredly be offended were he told,

* Geschichte des Materialismus, 2tes Buch, p. 181.

page 13 and that by a "candid friend," that his doctrine "explains nothing."
As it is impossible to come. to close quarters with a seesaw doctrine, which now touches solid ground and now escapes it, I naturally addressed myself to thorough-going materialists, without presuming to commit Professor Tyndall to their consistency. That there have been and are such persons—persons who have undertaken, by defining the essence of matter and fixing it in atoms, "to explain the enigmatical by the clear, the intricate by the simple, the unknown by the known"*—he cannot deny, after having himself introduced us to the thesis of Democritus,

* Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, ltes Buch, pp. 8, 9.

In connection with this name there is an historical error in the Belfast Address which I should hardly notice were it not likely to be perpetuated by the just reputation of the author, and did it not apparently fall back for support upon Lange. This writer, noticing that Democritus makes no attempt to explain the appearances of adaptation out of the blind power of natural necessity, adds, "Whether this gap lay in his system itself, or only in the tradition of it, we do not know; but we do know that the source of even this last principle of all materialism—rudely shaped, it is true, yet with perfect precision of idea—is to be found in the philosophic thought of the Hellenic race. What Darwin, with the support of vast stores of positive knowledge, has effected for the present time, Empedocles offered to the thinkers of antiquity—the simple and penetrating thought that if adaptations preponderate in the world, it is because it lies in their very nature to maintain themselves; while that which fails of adaptation has perished long ago." (I. pp. 22, 23.) Misled by the order of this passage, which gives the missing thought after naming the "gap" which it might have filled, Dr. Tyndall has described Empedocles as intentionally making good a defect in Democritus—"Noticing this gap in the doctrine of Democritus, he (Empedocles) struck in with the penetrative thought," &c. This is an inversion of the chronology. Empedocles preceded Democritus by at least a generation, being born about B.C. 490, and dying B.C. 430; whilst Democritus, whom we find at Thurii shortly after the foundation of the colony in B.C. 443, died at a very advanced age, B.C. 357.—Diog. Laert. viii. 52, 56, ix. 41. Comp. Arist. Met. A. 4, p. 965, b. 4.

page 14 the reasonings of Lucretius, and the method of Gassendi* The "atomists," says Lange, "attributed to matter only the simplest of the various properties of things—those, namely, which are indispensable for the presentation of a something in space and time; and their aim was to evolve from these alone the whole assemblage of phenomena." "They it was," he adds, "who gave the first perfectly clear notion of what we are to understand by matter as the basis of all phenomena. With the positing of this notion materialism stood complete, as the first perfectly clear and consequent theory of all phenomena." If there is any difference between this statement of the problem and my "travesty" of it, I cannot discern it.
The indistinctness of which I ventured to complain in Dr. Tyndall's account of his "primordial" datum, I do not find removed by my pleasant journey with him to the Caribbean Sea and the Alpine snows, or his graceful pictures of Cingalese ferns, and of nascent infant life. The whole exposition appears to be dominated by the tacit maxim, "No matter without force, no force without matter"—a maxim which may be true in fact, but does not dispense with the necessity of investigating the relation between two fundamental ideas which are not identical or interchangeable. In the natural sciences no harm is done by running them both together, or resorting in varying proportions to the one and to the other. Experimental research and mathematical deduction may go on undisturbed, by mere use of them as provisional conceptions, and

* Starting from the fundamental assumption, "Principio ergo Universum ex corpore et inani constat, neque enim tertia natura concipi mente præterea potest."—Phil. Epicur. Syntagma, Op. T. iii. 11.

Geschichte des Materialismus, i. pp. 8, 9.

Büchner: Kraft und Stoff, p. 2 (Aufl. 4).

page 15 without even suspecting that they carry in them any ulterior problem. But it is not by thus picking them up in mediis rebus, and taking them as they happen to come, that we can reach any philosophical view of the world, or estimate the theories which strive to interpret its unity and meaning. In spite of the cheap wit expended in derision of metaphysics, and the brave preference avowed for terra firma, you can escape them only by not knowing where you are. In their embrace you live and move and have your being; and, however fast your foot may cling to the earth, none the less do you swim with it through the infinite space which, even in its emptiness, is yet the condition of all solidity.

At a first glance, nothing looks more hopeful to the enthusiast for simplification than the reduction of "matter" to "force." Two or three easy equations will carry him through the problem. Matter is known to us only by its "properties," and, relatively to us, is tantamount to them. Its properties, again, are only its ways of affecting ourselves, either directly or through operations on other portions of matter. That is, it is represented to us wholly by the effects which it has power to produce, and resolves itself into an aggregate of forces. Make its essence what you will,—extension with Descartes; or palpableness with Fechner,—it is still as acting on the eye or the touch or the muscles that this essence reaches our apprehension; it is the cause of sensations to us, and anything that should cause such sensations would be identical with it. Is it not plain therefore that matter is simply power locally lodged? and that when pursued to its smallest conceivable elements, it merges into dynamic points, unextended centres of attraction and repulsion? Such a course of thought has again and again led to theories of dynamic idealism, like Bosco- page 16 vich's, Ampère's, and Cauchy's, in which the dimensions of the atoms whence molecular action proceeds not simply are small relatively to the distances which separate them, but absolutely vanish. Such theories, by isolating the elements needed for calculation, offer advantages for mathematical physics. But there will always be found an irresolvable residue which declines to melt away into force. When you have construed the atom's solidity into repulsion, and reduced its extension to nothing, there remains its position, and this "whereabouts" of a power is other than the power itself; and secures to it a Da-seyn or objective existence in space. Nor is the conception of motion adequately provided for in these schemes of abstraction. As geometrical points themselves cannot be moved, the phenomenon becomes a translation of a cluster of attractions and repulsions to new centres. But attraction with nothing to be attracted, repulsion with nothing to be repelled, motion with nothing to be moved, are presentable in language only, not in thought. The running of one eddy round another or into another is intelligible so long as there is a medium be it of ether, however rare; but in vacuo, not so. A material nidus is indispensable as the seat of every motory change. The reason of this lies in the very structure of the human understanding, which supplies us with the category of Attribute or Property only in combination with that of Substance or Thing as its abiding base. The relation between the attribute which speaks to you phenomenally, and the substance which is given intellectually, is indissoluble: and analyze the phenomena as you may, so as to turn them from one type of predicate to another, you cannot cut them off from their persistent and unyielding seat, so as to have left on your hands a set of predicates without any subject. Thus the idea of "matter" vindicates page 17 itself against every attempt to get rid of it by transformation.

The simplification has also been attempted by the inverse method of dispensing with "force," and making "matter" do all the work. In physics, it is said, we know what we perceive or generalize from perception: "we observe what our senses, armed with the aids furnished by science, enable us to observe—nothing more."* Movements, however, are all that we perceive, and if at first this fact escapes us when we hear and see, it is because our organs are not fine enough to read the undulations which deliver to them tones and tints. Submit their sensibility to adequate magnifying power, and all that is observable would resolve itself into local changes,—molecular or molar. It is the same in the celestial mechanics as in the scene of daily experience. We say that the moon goes through its lunations, and upheaves the tidal wave on the earth spinning beneath it, by the constant force of gravitation. But the real facts noticed are simply the presence, now here, now there, of two visible and solid globes, and of some piled-up water upon one of them, and a certain rule according to which these changes recur. Were these the only phenomena within our ken, this rule would be all that we mean by the "force" of which we speak. But as there are countless others which we have found to follow the same rule, we cannot speak of it without tacit reference to these, so that the word covers indefinitely more than the facts immediately in view. Still, it takes in nothing in any part of its field but movements and their law. And nothing moves but matter. The natural sciences would thus resolve themselves into a register of co-existent and sequent positions of bodies, expressed in formulas as comprehen-

* "Materialism and its Opponents," Fortnightly Review, p. 595.

page 18 sive as the state of analysis allowed; and in this form, as Comte and Mill justly insist, they would fulfil all the conditions of phenomenal knowledge, and secure that power of prevision which is the crown and reward of scientific labour.
This reduction of everything to matter, motion, and law, would be unimpeachable, were our intelligence somewhat differently constructed. Matter,—as these expositors set out by observing,—speaks to our perceptive senses alone; and we should still know it, had we no more than these, and the ability to retain their vestiges and set them in order. Let us only see how things like and unlike lie and move in place and time, and the history of matter is all before us. For this purpose we need not go, among the forms or data of the understanding, beyond the relations of objectivity, succession, and resemblance. But over and above these, we are subject to another determinate condition of thought,—the principle of causality,—in virtue of which there can be no cognition of phenomenon, except as relative to power that issues it, any more than there can be a cognition of a here without a there, or a before without an after. This intellectual law leaves us unsatisfied with merely reading the order of occurrence among the changes we perceive; it obliges us to refer movement to a motor, to look beyond the matter stirred to a force that stirs it, be the force without, as in the expansive energy which propels a loaded shell, or within, as in that which ultimately bursts it. In any case, you have here a clear dynamic addition to that scheme of regimented and marshalled phenomena which results from the lonely conception of matter. Will you rid yourself of the dualism by insisting, while you concede the power, that it is only a property of the matter?— page 18

"See," says Lange, "whether here you are not in danger of a logical circle. A 'thing' is known to us through its properties, a subject is determined by its predicates. But the 'thing' is in fact only the resting-point demanded by our thought. We know nothing but the properties and their concurrence in an unknown object, the assumption of which is a figment of our mind (Gemüth), a necessary one it seems, rendered imperative by our organization."*

Another answer may be given thus:—'You may make anything a predicate of matter which you can observe in it, i. e. all its movements; but not what you cannot observe, therefore not the power which issues the movements; for this is not seen in the phenomenon; it is supplied by a necessity of thought, not as an element in it, but as a condition of it.'

Inasmuch then as both "matter" and "force" are intellectual data (noümena), involved respectively in the principle of Objectivity and in that of Causality, neither can be substituted for the other. For ages each has been trying to end the divided sway; but the rival, though often driven from the front, has always found at last an impregnable retreat, whence its rights return to recognition when the usurping rage is past. The present tendency in natural science is so strongly in favour of force as the better known term, that, according to Lange, "the untrue element in materialism, viz., the erecting of matter into the principle of all that exists, is completely, and it would seem definitively, set aside."

From these two roots have arisen two forms of naturalism, capable no doubt of a balanced co-existence in the same mind, but often unharmonized, and expressing themselves in doctrines doubtfully related to each other. The

* Geschichte des Materialismus, ii. p. 214.

Ibid. p. 215.

page 20 material theory works out the conception of Atoms. The dynamic relies on that of the Conservation of energy. As a means of intellectually organizing ascertained facts, and holding them together in a tissue of conceivable relations, these conceptions possess a high value, and are indispensable to the reaching of any generalizations yet higher. In the one, the multiple proportions of chemistry and the laws of elastic diffusion find an adequate vehicle of expression and computation. In the other, a common measure is set up for variations of heat and mechanical work and chemical decomposition and electrical intensity, bringing several special provinces into a federal affinity. Dr. Tyndall misconstrues me when he imputes to me any disparagement of these conceptions, in their scientific use, for formulating, linking, and anticipating phenomena. It is not till they break these bounds, and, mistaking their own logical character, set up philosophical pretensions as adequate data for the deductive construction of a universe without mind, that I venture to resist their absolutism, and set them back within their constitutional rights. It is no wonder, perhaps, that many an enthusiast in the study of nature, excited by the race of rapid discovery, should lose count of his direction as he sweeps along, and, mounted upon these hobbies, should fancy that he can ride off into the region of ontology, and finding nothing, because never really there, should mistake his own failure for its blank. But the calmer critics of human thought know how to distinguish between the physical and the metaphysical use of these conceptions.

"There is scarcely a more naïve expression of the materialism of the day," says Lange, "than escapes from Büchner, when he calls the atoms of modern times 'discoveries of natural science,' while those of the ancients are said to have been 'arbitrary page 21 speculative representations.' In point of fact, the atomic doctrine to-day is still what it was in the time of Democritus. It has still not lost its metaphysical character; and already in ancient times it served also as a scientific hypothesis for the explanation of natural processes."*

And respecting the law of Conservation of energy, Lange observes that, taken in its "strictest and most consequent meaning, it is anything but proved: it is only an 'Ideal of the Reason,' perhaps however indispensable as a goal for all empirical research." It is from no want of deference for science proper that I pass again under review the competency of these two doctrines to work out, ab initio, a blind cosmogony.

* Geschichte des Materialismus, ii. 181.

Ibid. p. 213.