32. What is Materialism ?
As soon as we begin to reflect we become conscious of the presence of two everywhere interlaced, but always distinct classes of phenomena — of thought, feeling, will on the one hand, and of extension, inertia, etc., on the other. Analyze these as we may, we never can resolve the one into the other. The one class we come to know through consciousness, the other through sensation, and we know the one as directly and as certainly as the other ; and as we can never resolve either into the other, we refer the one class to a substance called spirit, and the other class to a substance called matter.
Materialists are a set of superficial philosophers, with whom the phenomena of feeling, conscience and will are not intense, and who have formed the habit of looking too exclusively outward upon the world present to the senses. Hence they fall into ' the funda- mental error of affirming, 1st. That there is but one substance in the universe, and 2d. That intelligence, feeling, conscience,' voli- tion, etc., are only properties of matter under certain modifica- tions. Intelligence did not create and organize matter, but matter, organizing according to its inherent laws, evolved intelligence.
To this we answer, 1st. This is no recondite dispute, as some Materialists pretend, concerning substance. The Materialist knows that by affirming conscience to be only a modification of matter he destroys its essential nature — because if it be material it is mechanical and not moral. His object doubtless is to reason away the phenomena of conscience and liberty. 2d. The theory is one-sided. Our knowledge of thought and feeling, conscience and will, is at least as immediate and certain as our knowledge of matter. Neither should be sacrificed to the other. 3d. It is un- warrantable dogmatism arbitrarily to refer the two classes of phe- nomena to the same ground, while we are utterly unable logically to resolve one class into the other. 4th. This theory is inconsist- ent with consciousness and experience, the solid grounds of all
34 THE BEING OF GOD.
our knowledge on this subject. (1.) While the senses are several, and the bodily organization constantly changing, yet in every complex experience, and through all time, the central I, which thinks and feels, is an absolute unit. (2.) Matter is seen to be in- capable of originating action — the central I has the power of ab- solute causation. (3.) As far as we ever see organization is always the result, never the cause of intelligence.
33. What is Idealism ?
As the Materialist holds that the sensible is the only real, and that mind is a modification of matter, so the extreme Idealist holds that the sensitive and cognitive mind is the only real, and that the phenomena of the material world are only modifica- tions of mind. When a man sees or feels a material object, the thought or feeling of which he is conscious is within the mind itself. The Idealist argues consequently that all the man really knows is the thought or feeling of which he is conscious, and that he can never be rationally certain whether there is any outward reality corresponding to that inward state or not.
In the most extreme form this tendency leaves the individual philosopher a solitary dreamer in the midst of the world. He can know, nothing outside of himself and the successions of his own thoughts. This is the subjective Idealism of Fichte.
In a lower degree this tendency leads to an Idealistic Pan- theism, when all the phenomena of the universe, internal and external, is referred to the modifications of one infinite spirit, which is God. Such is the Pantheism of Schelling and Hegel.
But the phrase, Idealism, is also applied, in a modified sense, to those systems of philosophy which, while admitting the exist- ence both of matter and mind, yet build themselves ultimately upon the unresolvable first principles of man's internal self-con- sciousness.
34. What is Hylozoism ? r
Hylozoism, compounded of two Greek words, v\r\ wood, $wf\ life — riving, animated matter, designates a theory attributed to Strato of Lampsacus, who, confounding life and intellect with force and motion, regarded the universe as a vast animal self-de- veloping through the plastic power of its own inherent life, *. e.,
PANTHEISM. 35
unconsciously self-developing from eternity. — Bitter, Hist. An. Phil. 3 book 9, chap. 6.
35. What is Pantheism ?