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necessarily be as divisible, as multiple, as its material manifestation. The force in one place could not but be distinct from the force in another place. A world of physical force must be a world which is simply an aggregate of physical forces.

It follows from what has been said that the world can have no real unity either in mere matter or mere physical force. If reason is to find the unity it seeks, it must go farther and deeper; it must not stop short of an immaterial cause of matter, of an indivisible source of divisible forces, of a power which can give to what is essentially multiple the unity of arrangement and plan. Monism can have no other solid basis than the truth that the universe "lives and moves and has its being" in a single creative and providential Mind, "of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things."

We have next to examine whether or not the claim of materialism to be a system which proceeds on principles that are strictly natural and scientific, is well founded. It seems to me that it is not. One of its principles is that there is nothing in the universe except matter, and what is explicable by matter; that to refer to anything else as a cause is to appeal to an arbitrary or imaginary factor. Now, whatever the affirmation here may be as a conclusion, it is plainly irrational and unscientific as a principle. The man who

begins investigation with it comes to nature with an à priori dogma, and insists that she shall only tell him what he already wishes to believe. That is not scientific, but essentially anti - scientific. Genuine science demands that nature shall be allowed to speak for herself and be believed, whether she teaches that the principles required for the explanation of her phenomena are few or many. No factor ought to be pronounced arbitrary or imaginary until proved to be not required for the explanation of facts. The materialist, if he would be truly scientific, must be content to wait until he has finished his argumentation against the spiritualist and the theist before he affirms that to trace effects to God or the soul is to appeal to an arbitrary factor. But where are there materialists to be found who are willing to do anything of the kind? I know of none. Almost without exception, materialists assume at the outset that science is bound to recognise only material causes, and their whole argumentation is largely dependent on this assumption.

A second principle of materialism is that the higher must be explained by the lower, the superior by the inferior. Comte was perhaps the first clearly to point out that this is the universal and distinctive characteristic of materialism. It accounts for force by matter, for the orderly by the unorderly, for the organic by the inorganic, for

life by chemistry and mechanism, for thought, feeling, and volition, by molecular motions in the brain and nerves. It assumes that this is the peculiarly and exclusively scientific method of procedure. But the assumption is unwarranted so long as the anti-materialist can argue on rational grounds that this so-called scientific procedure is a continuous violation of the principle of causality. And this, I need scarcely say, is precisely what the anti-materialist maintains. He undertakes to show that, at every fresh stage in the materialistic course of explanation, there is more in the alleged effect than in the assigned cause, or, in other words, that there is something in the so-called effect which is traced to no cause, and consequently, that something is implied to be produced by nothing. Materialism professes to accept the axiom that "nothing comes from nothing" more strictly than any other system; but its critics complain that the principle of which it makes the most frequent application is that the greater may be caused by the less-that something may come from nothing. The materialist declares his inability to believe in creation by the infinite power of an infinite mind, but he seems to his opponents. to display a wonderful capacity for believing in a whole series of creations out of nothing and by nothing. It is not for me to pronounce at present whether this accusation be well founded or ill

founded. It is sufficient for my immediate purpose that materialism can have no claim to be considered scientific until the charge is disproved. There can be nothing scientific in continuously violating the law of causality.

Yet some persons seem to see nothing irrational even in such violation. The author of a recently published work, entitled 'A Candid Examination of Theism'-an author who writes under the nom de plume of "Physicus" - quotes these words of Locke: "Whatsoever is first of all things must necessarily contain in it, and actually have, at least, all the perfections that can ever after exist; nor can it ever give to another any perfection that it hath not actually in itself, or at least in a higher degree; it necessarily follows that the first eternal being cannot be matter." He then adds, "Now, as this presentation is strictly formal, I shall meet it with a formal reply, and this reply consists in a direct contradiction. It is simply untrue that 'whatsoever is first of all things must necessarily contain in it, and actually have, at least, all the perfections that can ever after exist;' or that it can never 'give to another any perfection that it hath not actually in itself.' In a sense, no doubt, a cause contains all that is contained in its effects; the latter content being potentially present in the former. But to say that a cause already contains actually all that its effects may afterwards so con

tain, is a statement which logic and common-sense alike condemn as absurd."-(P. 21.) Indeed!

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The affirmation of Locke which is here met with a "direct contradiction," and pronounced "simply untrue," may not have been unexceptionably expressed, but it just means that every cause must be a sufficient cause, that a weight of four pounds, for example, cannot balance one of ten pounds; and he who meets it with a direct contradiction needs, of course, no contradiction, especially if he has failed to perceive that a cause is only a cause in so far as it displays actual power and perfection. It is curious, however, that the writer mentioned should be able to quote an argument to the same effect from Mr J. S. Mill's 'Essay on Theism.' We there read: "Apart from experience, and arguing on what is called reason —that is, on supposed self-evidence-the notion seems to be that no causes can give rise to products of a more precious or elevated kind than themselves. But this is at variance with the known analogies of nature. How vastly nobler and more precious, for instance, are the vegetables and animals than the soil and manure out of which, and by the properties of which, they are raised up! The tendency of all recent speculation is towards the opinion that the development of inferior orders of existence into superior, the substitution of greater elaboration and higher organ

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