The Growth of Materialism

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 254, 29 October 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Growth of Materialism

It has been deplored of late that poetry appears to be decaying, and various ingenious efforts have been made to account for this. The real cause for wonder is that poetry should have stayed so long in a world which has rejected nearly everything upon which it battens. Materialism is the death of song, and the more prosperous it grows tho more prosaic does it become. Hitherto, indeed, we have been living largely upon our inheritance in this regard. We could not at once exhaust the great store of imagination which descended to us from agesl that preserved ideals and did not wholly excludo the spiritual from existence, and upon bhat ancient stock our poets have drawn. But now we aro approaching the end of this inheritance, and as we begin to fall back upon the original products of our own time, their aridity strikes a death-cliill to the heart of poetry, and it fades and withei-3. There is, however, so nicely shaded a gradation in the processes by which, as in the working of "dissolving views," one tendency disappears and another takes its place, that paradoxical occurrences sometimes mark tho transition. Thus, among tho leaders of scientific materialism to-day may be seen men of genius, who unconsciously derive from the idealism of their ancestors an imaginative force and brilliancy which they employ in the destruction of the influence furnishing their strongest and most effective weapons. The scientific imagination owes its vitality to the ideal which it denies. It is to this dishonoured ideal that the world is under obligation for whatever it enjoys and possesses which is not at bottom barbarism. Psychology is bhe least devoted science among the Western nations. lbs students revolve like squirrels in their wheel, and they have nob succeeded yet in attaining an equal height with Plato, nor have they reached more definite knowledge than tho astron omer-poet of Persia, Omar Kkayyam, had acquired eight hundred years ago. TheiiJe is nothing intrinsically humiliating tn the doOtrWo Of evolution. Mankind miglifc con template, without mortification, and accept, without loss of self-r6spect, the theory of descent from the ascidian, might acknowledge, without repulsion, their relationship to the anthropoid ape, if. the curve of progress wero plainly carrying them farther and farther from these lowly origins, and bringing them as clearly nearer and nearer a higher order of existence. Bub Avhat if "the heirs of all the ages in the foremost files of time" inherit, with their other possessions, tendencies, tho development of which, while vastly increasing the external at tractiveness and splendour of life, are fixing the race in a line of advance Which ends in a cid-de-sac"! Abstract the spiritual qualities from man—throw him back altogether upon bis instincts—and he does not sink merely to the level of the beasts; he becomes their inferior. For if the beasts are "vacant of our glorious gains" in intelligence, at least their instincts guide them more surely than the partially atrophied instincts of man guide him. The beasts know when they have enough ; man never does. Tho beasts avoid excess: man does not. The beasts recognise the things in nature which are for their good : man has no such gift. Take from man, therefore, his spiritual part, and his course is endangered—perhaps brought to a standstill, perhaps even turned back. But the spiritual side of man is at present quite generally neglected, and all the energy available is being expended on the education of his lower—that is to say, his material—side. How much does the world owe to the ideal ? is a question which can hardly be answered candidly without casting serious doubt upon the practicability of permanent progress on the lines of materalism ; and yet it is assuredly on those lines that it is now advancing, and perhaps more wholly upon those lines than at any former period. Affection, reverence, self-sacri-fice, modesty, veracity, the power of estimating things truly, appreciation of the higher life, every elevating tendeney> every worthy aspiration, flourish best on the family hearth. But if selfishness, and silly frivoliby, and servitude to appearances, and the myriad hypocrisies, shams, and littlenesses of sordid convention fill and control the place, alas for the generation so defrauded of its sacred birthright, so delivered helpless to the materialism of the age ! There is no remedy in the extension of educational machinery. We may exchange the classics for modern languages; we may make more room for physical science ; we may introduce courses on the science of government; we may pay more attention to political economy; we may add technical schools to the common ones ; but, when we have done our best, we shall have failed to evolve a substitute for the only education which gives life a significance higher and broader than that of Descartes' automatism. The poet may postulate

" Some far off, divine event To which the whole creation moves, but what meaning can there be in such a suggestion to a world which is steeped^ to the lips in materialism, which is becoming more and more atrophied as to its spiritual capacities; which rejoices in the agnostic philosophy that draws the curtain over all the future, and concentrates the lime-light of intellect upon the present alone? To the question, What is man ? the answer of science is, "A little higher than the beasts." the answer of revelation is, "A little lower than the. angels.' But to-day it is science that speaks ex cathedra. There is no content, nor enduring satisfaction, nor evolution other than animal, nor invention other than sensual, nor culture other than soulless when spirituality is excluded, or dormant, or paralysed. Human history in the past has been a monotonous iteration of lessonß on this one theme. Poverty, thrift, prosperity, wealth, luxury, corruptness, degradation—in these seven words the fate of many great empires id told. The globe is-fehe burial-place of extinct civilisations, and materialism was the disease of which, they one and all died.—"Atlantic Monthly;" ... : —