The Freethought Review. WANGANUI, N.Z., APRIL 1, 1884. MATERIALISM.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 7, 1 April 1884, Page 9

The Freethought Review. WANGANUI, N.Z., APRIL 1, 1884. MATERIALISM.

It must be confessed that the crude and superficial materialism which was popularised by such writers as Voltaire and Baron DTlolbach (so-called), and in more recent times by the author of the “ Vestiges of Creation,” Dr. E. Buchner, and others, has tended to bring discredit upon a mode of conceiving the universe which, properly presented, is essentially sound. I say essentially sound, in the sense that a monistic theory of the two worlds known to us as the unconscious and the conscious, may be made perfectly self-consistent, not in the sense that any cognition of “ things in themselves ” is, or can be, possible to the human intellect. As Mr. G. H. Lewes acutely remarks in his “ Problems of Life and Mind ” —“ To know things “as they are to us is all we need to know, all that “is possible to be known ; a knowledge of the “ super-sensiblewere it gained—would, by the very “ faft of coming under the conditions of knowledge, “only be knowledge of its relations to us, —the “ knowledge would still be relative, phenomenal.” In this respedl, at least, those two great metaphysical champions of orthodoxy, Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, are at one with Mr. Lewes. Indeed, Mr. Mansel prefixed the following quotation from Sir William Hamilton’s “ Discussions on Philosophy ” to his celebrated Bampton ledture, “ The Limits of “ Religious Thought ” :—“ Our whole knowledge of “ mind and of matter is relative, conditioned “ relatively conditioned. Of things absolutely or in “ themselves, be they external, be they internal, we “ know nothing, or know them only as incognisable, “ and become aware of their incomprehensible existence “ only as this is indiredtly and accidentally revealed to “ us, through certain qualities related to our faculties “ of knowledge, and which qualities, again, we cannot “think as unconditioned, irrelative, existent in and of “ themselves. All we know is therefore phenomenal —

" phenomenal of the unknown." I have premised this much because the opponents of modern materialism — or, as I should prefer to call it, Monism, toavoid misleading associationsconstantly speak of materialism as if it was an attempt to explain the universe in the ontological sense, as to which all materialists, who have really thought out the subject, agree with Mr. Leslie Stephen, and " utterly disbelieve " in any so-called ontology," " regarding it as a barren " region haunted by shadowy chimeras, mere spectres, " which have not life enough in them even to be wrong, " nonentities veiled under dexterously woven masses of " verbiage." What the ontologist attempts isto" spin " out of his own mind a demonstration of the ultimate " nature of things in general," and fails, simply because a demonstration or an explanation can only mean a perception that some particular fact is included in some more general or at least better known fact, and the totality of being cannot be referred to any higher generalisation than itself. From Kant to Hegel, the whole history of theprofoundest speculative philosophy only shows that " the greatest athlete cannot get off " his own shadow."

" A man is a sound reasoner when his thoughts " accurately reflect the external world," and this implies not only a logical mode of thinking, but getting rid of illusions due to an earlier stage of thought. Metaphysics have been useful, in Berkley's phrase, so far as they have laid the dust we have ourselves raised, while building up the edifice of knowledge. They have, too, taught us the limit of bur powers, and perhaps strengthened those powers themselves. They are the gymnastics of our youth, but may well be abandoned in our manhood for labours which, if less arduous, are certainly more productive. Apart, then, from the domain of the unknowable, a glance at the history of opinion teaches that very early in the evolution of thought, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has lately reminded us, the human imagination transferred its own consciousness to the external world, but considered both material. Most of the ancient Greek philosophers held a similar opinion, and so did many of the early Christian fathers. The idea that the thinking substance, or soul, was immaterial seems to have been first brought into prominence by Plato, and was held by the later fathers, and, through Aristotle, by the Schoolmen, and is the common opinion now. Along with this opinion similar notions prevailed as to the nature of the Gods or God. God and soul were and are affiliated ideas, and have their common origin in conditionsproper to the " theological stage " in the history of humanity. It is no doubt possible to represent all exp 2cience in terms of mind, as Berkley, Mill, and many others, have done, and then to claim a reality for mind which is denied for matter, which is indeed substantially the position assumed by Indian philosophy ; but the fallacy involved in this conclusion was long ago exposed by Hume, and Mr. Spencer has shown in his " Psychology," " that the thing primarily known, is not " that a sensation has been experienced, but that there " exists an outer object." It is impossible to condense the admirable reasoning by which he establishes and illustrates the .doctrine of " Transfigured Realism," which means, that however unlike our sensations may be to the cause of them, they have an external cause ; that in short the " object of cognition has an " independent existence." We find, in fact, that just I as a legal opinion which is contrary to common sense is probably bad law, so a metaphysical opinion (such as pure idealism), which is contrary to common sense, is probably bad metaphysics, and is certainly false science. We have then practically only to deal with that world of matter and force which science recognises according to its actual relations as known to us, and here we are at once met by the acknowledged fact that within our experience mind never exists apart from matter. More than this, Geology teaches that at a period, estimated by Sir William Thompson at not less than 100 million, or more than 400 million years ago, our globe had only sufficiently cooled down on its surface to support life in its lowest forms, and therefore we may infer that somewhere about that period life and , possibly consciousness began to emerge from what we call inorganic matter. But say the opponents of

materialism, “ given the non-sentient atoms, how is the sentient to be developed out of the non-sentient.” To this I reply that we do not know, just as we do not know how the non-sentient egg is developed into the sentient chicken ; but the fact is palpable in this and in a vast number of analogous cases, and similar relations may exist in all cases. Prior to.experience we have no more right to say that the conscious cannot be evolved from the unconscious, than we have to say that water cannot be produced by the explosion of two invisible gases. Newton, who is so constantly quoted as an instance where vast intellectual power and great scientific knowledge were combined with unquestioning faith, considered that “ we know too little of Nature for us to “ dare to affirm that it is impossible for God to add the gift “of thought to any extended substance “whatever.” In other words, Newton, like Priestley, saw no difficulty in regarding mind in that relational aspect which some modern writers seem to consider unthinkable. So far is this from being true that we can, as it were, think away all particular modes of consciousness, even such so-called “forms of thought” as time and space, till we come to that bare feeling which Mr. Spencer describes as “a kind of shock” caused by such external vibrations as those which are translated in consciousness as sound or light. This is not to consider subject and object identical, but invariably connected, while both are forms of the unconditioned being common to the two. But while admitting as fully as the most orthodox theologian could do that from whatever point Ave start we*always meet with an insoluble mystery at last, just as all straight roads lead to the ocean, still while science stops only because she can go no further, theology is always laying down some imaginary boundary line and filling up the intervening space with metaphysical conceptions which are nothing more than the names of groups of sensations, which are then dignified with the title of the soul or the “ Ego,” and regarded as an entity in which all the faculties of the mind inhere. On this we are told that man cannot be more conscious of his own personal existence than he is of the existence of God, to whom is attributed a personality which we know historically is nothing more than a distorted image of mankind in its different phases of civilisation. Among the Semitic nations he was worshipped as the god of races and nations, hence his moral qualities, derived from social relations, became more prominent among them than they did among the Aryans, with whom he was always to a much greater extent the God of nature, till in our day he has become but little more than the name by which the uniform course of nature is indicated. Even those who in words profess a belief in a personal God and think with Newton that an infinite, almighty, eternal, creative being, is but a barren idea if he is not also regarded as “a master who had established a relation between himself and his creatures,” do not practically aCI on any such belief where its verification is possible. A good God has made an immortal soul, and will confer infinite happiness upon —in their own case at any rate—if they exercise what they are pleased to call “faith,” in matters which seem rather to demand the most careful investigation, but in all matters where their opinions can be brought to the test of experience these same persons would not even be suspended of holding such a faith but for their assertion that they do hold it. They carry on the business of life in full confidence that the chain of cause and effeCl never has been broken and never will be broken. Providential interference is about the last thing that any but the most ignorant of those who accept any form of supernaturalism would admit of as an explanation of events occurring now, and they onty vaguely imagine that a long time ago, and in places a long way off, the case was different. Of this there is no proof whatever. On the contrary, the whole course of history is in complete accord with the conclusions of modern science, that all that has been, all that is, and all that will be, is only a development of the natural. How completely such a monistic theory of the Cosmos gets rid of the moral difficulties inherent in any theological scheme that can be propounded, will be shown on a future occasion. R.P.