contributed to deteriorate society. There was action and reaction. The atheism of the epoch was as much the effect as the cause of its corruption. It was, certainly, not wholly either the effect or the cause, but was partly both. Further, the enormous and bewildering mass of events and declarations called the French Revolution need not be pronounced either wholly or mainly evil, nor need the sceptical philosophers be denied to have been largely instrumental in diffusing salutary truths as well as pernicious errors. We may give all due justice to the Revolution and its authors and yet hold that its worst features were the natural expressions of the materialistic and atheistic views, and the selfish and sensuous principles prevalent in the generation which accomplished it, and in the generation which preceded it. When God was decreed a non-entity and death an eternal sleep, when divine worship was abolished and marriage superseded, the rights of property disregarded, and life lavishly and wantonly sacrificed, the atheistical materialism of La Mettrie and Von Holbach was seen bearing its appropriate poisonous fruit. If you convince men that in nature and destiny they are not essentially different from the beasts that perish, it may well be feared that they will live and act as beasts casting off, as far as they can, all the restraints imposed by human and divine institutions, all

G

the bonds of the family, the Church, and the State.

While materialism contributed in a considerable measure to bring about the Revolution, the Revolution did little to diffuse materialism and much to discredit it. A reaction set in. A vast intellectual and moral change, the causes of which have not yet, perhaps, been adequately traced, came over the European mind. Religion, poetry, literature, science, philosophy, were all permeated and quickened by a new and deeper spirit. The consequence was that materialism lost its hold on men's minds and sank into general contempt. The generation that admired Goethe and Schiller, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Cousin, Hamilton, could only wonder that a theory so poor and shallow as materialism had ever exerted a wide and powerful influence. It seemed as if its day were past; as if it could never return, except, perhaps, in some very subtle and refined form.

But it is not to be hoped that materialism will ever quite be got rid of, so long as the constitution of the human mind and the character of human society remain substantially what they are. Physical nature and its laws explain much, and so long as the human mind is prone to exaggeration, and education is imperfect and one-sided, and society is more under the influence of the seen than the

unseen, of the temporal than the eternal, it may be anticipated that many will fancy that matter and motion explain everything-and this fancy is the essence of materialism. Thus materialism is a danger to which individuals and societies will always be more or less exposed. The present generation, however, and especially the generation which is growing up, will obviously be very specially exposed to it; as much so, perhaps, as any generation in the history of the world.

Within

the last thirty years the great wave of spiritualistic or idealistic thought, which has borne to us on its bosom most of what is of chief value in the nineteenth century, has been receding and decreasing; and another, which is in the main driven by materialistic forces, has been gradually rising behind it, vast and threatening. It is but its crests that we at present see; it is but a certain vague shaking produced by it that we at present feel; but we shall probably soon enough fail not both to see and feel it fully and distinctly. Materialism has gained to itself a lamentably large proportion of the chiefs of contemporary science, and it finds in them advocates as outspoken and enthusiastic as were Lucretius and Holbach. Multitudes are disposed to listen and believe with an uninquiring and irrational faith. Materialism-atheistical materialism—may at no distant date, unless earnestly and wisely opposed, be strong enough to

undertake to alter all our institutions, and to abolish those which it dislikes.

How is it that materialism has reappeared in such force? The following considerations may yield a partial answer. In the first place, the materialism of the eighteenth century has actually descended to, or been inherited by, the present generation. Although for a considerable time materialism was feeble and unpopular, it was never wholly without defenders. The continuity of its history was at no point completely broken. In England, for example, three generations of Darwins have entertained materialistic convictions. Works like Thomas Hope's 'Essay on the Origin and Progress of Man,' and the anonymous 'Vestiges of Creation,' connect the 'Zoonomia' of Erasmus Darwin with the 'Origin of Species' of Charles Darwin. The principles of sensationalism found not a few zealous defenders when the antagonistic doctrine was at the height of its success, and sensationalism is intimately related to materialism. About 1840 atheism began to be openly avowed to a considerable extent among the working classes, and what has since been called secularism made its appearance. Secularism involves materialism. In 1851 Mr Henry G. Atkinson and Miss Harriet Martineau published their 'Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development,' advocating without reservation or

restraint a crude materialism and utter atheism. They taught that "philosophy finds no God in nature, nor sees the want of any;" that "fitness in nature is no evidence of design;" that “all causes are material causes influenced by surrounding circumstances;" that "mind is the manifestation or expression of the brain in action;" that "instinct, passion, thought, are effects of organised substances;" that "only ignorance conceives the will to be free;" that "there is no more sin in a crooked disposition than in a crooked stick in the water, or in a hump-back or a squint;" and that 'we ought to be content that in death the lease of personality shall pass away, and that we shall be as we were before we were - in a sleep for evermore." It was no wonder that England was shocked to be asked in the middle of the nineteenth century to receive this old and sad story as good news of great joy. But in the years which have since elapsed a host of compositions have appeared avowing quite as nakedly disbelief in God, spiritfreedom, responsibility, and belief only in the properties and products of matter.1

Materialism was still more influential in France than in England throughout the first half of the present century. What little philosophy there was under the revolutionary governments and the Empire proceeded mainly on sensationalistic See Appendix XIV.