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tems which may with equal right be designated materialistic or pantheistic, and even materialistic or idealistic. The only kind of system of which history supplies no record is one which would answer truly to the name of materialism. The name would naturally denote a theory which explains the universe by what is known as matter, or by matter as known through ordinary observation or scientific investigation. There neither is, however, nor ever has been, any such theory. It is a universal characteristic of materialism that it supposes matter to be more than it is known to be; that it imaginatively exalts and glorifies matter beyond what sense or science warrants. It always attributes to matter eternity and self-existence; sometimes it supposes it to be likewise essentially active; sometimes it endows it with life, with sensation, with volition, with intelligence. Systems which agree in verbally representing matter as the foundation and explanation of the universe, differ enormously as to what matter is, but they all, without exception, ascribe to matter properties of which experience teaches us nothing.

It is perhaps impossible to fix precisely where the history of materialism begins. To say that it is "as old but not older than philosophy," is to say nothing, unless you say how old philosophy is. But philosophy existed in union with religion long before it existed in a state of independence, and,

for anything we know to the contrary, may be as old as human reason itself. Notwithstanding the prevalence of the contrary opinion, there is evidence that even the lowest forms of religion have originated in a speculative impulse. They are not mere embodiments of the feelings of fear, or love, or dependence, but consist in great part of rude speculations, strange fancies, as to the making and the meaning of nature and of man. The ruder tribes of men seem unable to conceive either of mere matter or mere spirit; they spiritualise matter and materialise spirit; souls and gods are supposed by them to be material beings, and material things to have souls and divine powers; they cannot think of matter and spirit as separate existences. Fetichism, animism, animal-worship, nature-worship, have all their root in this mental incapacity. All these forms of religion may with almost as much propriety be called materialistic as the professedly materialistic theories of the recent speculators who, in the name of science, ascribe life and sense and other potencies even to the ultimate elements of matter. The feeble power of abstraction which characterises uncultured man has always made him, to a considerable extent, a materialist. He has been unable to think of mind and matter apart; of a body without spirit or spirit without body; of nature without God or God without nature. Man

has been unable until comparatively late times either to raise or answer the question, Was mind before matter or matter before mind? The Jews seem to have been the first nation raised above such materialism, and raised also, in consequence, above pantheism to a true theism. It is the Bible which has impressed on the human mind the great thought of the creation of matter by the will, the word of God.

The rude religious materialism now referred to is, of course, a very different thing from a speculative anti-religious materialism, but it explains why, as soon as speculation appeared and assumed an anti-religious attitude, it should have presented itself in the form of materialism. In spite of all that has been said against speculation, however, it is not the rule, it is only the exception, for it to be anti-religious; it is not the rule, but only the exception, for it to lead to materialism. The tendency of speculation, of refined and disciplined reflection, of thought which seeks really to comprehend what it has before it, is, if history may be credited, to get beyond matter, not to rest in it. The history of

materialism impartially written is

not a very brilliant one. Comparatively few of the world's greatest thinkers have been adherents of this system. Its advocates have often done it little credit.1

In China, more than three hundred years before 1 See Appendix V.

the Christian era, an avowedly atheistical materialism was widely prevalent. It was the chief task in life of one of the most celebrated Chinese philosophers, Meng-tseu, better known in the West as Mencius, to combat this doctrine, and the views of man's duty and destiny which were based on it. He believed it to have caused a vast amount of harm to his country, and that no society could long exist which entertained it. A few lines from an essay of one of the men whose teaching he strove to counteract will probably be sufficient to convince you that he was not far wrong. Yang Choo said, "Wherein people differ is the matter of life; wherein they agree is death. While they are alive we have the distinctions of intelligence and stupidity, honourableness and meanness; when they are dead we have so much rottenness decaying away, this is the common lot. Yet intelligence and stupidity, honourableness and meanness, are not in one's power; neither is that condition of putridity, decay, and utter disappearance. A man's life is not in his own hands, nor is his death; his intelligence is not his own, nor is his stupidity, nor his honourableness, nor his meanness. All are born and all die;-the intelligent and the stupid, the honourable and the At ten years old some die; at a hundred years old some die. The virtuous and the sage die; the ruffian and the fool also die. Alive,

mean.

they were Yaou and Shun, the most virtuous of men; dead, they are so much rotten bone. Alive, they were Klee and Chow, the most wicked of men; dead, they are so much rotten bone. Who could know any difference between their rotten bones? While alive, therefore, let us hasten to make the best of life. When about to die, let us treat the thing with indifference and endure it; and seeking to accomplish our departure, so abandon ourselves to annihilation."

Plainer language than this there could not be. The whole essay is of the same character and tenor. Its author was avowedly without God and without hope in the world. He thought human beings were mere combinations of particles of dust, and would dissolve into particles of dust again. He saw that however differently men lived, their common lot was death; and he fancied that after death there was nothing left but "rotten bone." A man lives virtuously, but if he is unhappy all through life, as the virtuous often are, his virtue would seem, since there is no future world, to have done him no good. You may praise him after he is dead, but that is no more to him than to the trunk of a tree or a clod of earth. Or he may live what is called a vicious life, but if he have thereby the joy of gratifying his desires, any blame you may give him after he is dead will not take away from the reality of his

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