in their amount." ^ (5.) Epicurus taught that the quantity of mat- ter, and of course the amount of force in the world, is always the same. Neither can be increased or diminished. (6.) The atoms, of which the number is infinite, move thi'ough space with incred- ible velocity under the guidance of necessary physical laws. (7.) By the combination of these atoms under the influence of grav- ity and other physical forces, the universe was formed, and became a cosmos. This is very nearly the nebular hypothesis. (8.) The soul is material ; or, in other words, all mental phenomena are due to the properties of matter. This, also, is proclaimed as the last result of modern science. (9.) The soul, of course, ceases to exist when the body dies ; i. e., as death is the cessation of the vital, so it is also of the intellectual functions of the individual. The atoms of which the man is composed, with the forces which belong to them, continue to exist, and may enter into the composition of other men. But the man, as an individual, ceases to exist. This, almost in so many words, is the avowed doctrine of many physicists of the present day. (10.) Sensation is for us the only source of knowl- edge. By remembering former ^sensations, we form ideas, and by the combination of ideas we f<5rm judgments. Almost the very words of Hume, and the doctrine of the whole school of which he is the representative. (11-) As Epicurus held that nothing is in- corporeal except a vacuum, he of necessity includes all the forms of existence under the head of matter. As there is no mind or spirit, there is no God, and no moral law. Virtue is only a pru- dent regard to happiness. In a certain sense he admitted the ex- istence of Gods, but they were corporeal beings having no concern with the affairs of men.^
A recent German writer,'^ in Herzog's " Encyklopadie," under the head of Materialismus, says that notwithstanding the great progress of modern science, the Materialists of our day have not advanced a step upon the system of Epicurus. That system, probably owing to the dominant influence of the higher philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, did not exert much influence on the ancient mind, or on the progress of human thought. It was not until modern times that Materialism gained any great power as a philosophical theory.
1 Croonian Lectures on Matter and Force. Given at the Royal College of Ph3'sicians, in 1868. Bj' Henry Bruce Jones, A. M.,M. D., F. R. S., London", 1868, p. 17.
2 Hixner's Geschichte der Philosopliie, i. 303-318. Ritter's History of Philosophy, trans. .eted by A. J. W. Morrison, iii. 399-447.
8 F.Fabri.
248 PART L — THEOLOGY. [Ch. m. — Anti-Theism.
B. Materialism in England during the Eighteenth Century.
Hobbes (1588-1679) anticipated the movement towards Mate- rialism which manifested itself in England during the last century. " He made sensation the real basis of every mental operation, the sole originator of our ideas, the sole medium and test of truth.^ As, therefore, we can perceive through sensation only what is ma- terial, he concluded that matter is the only reality, and that what- ever exists to us must accordingly be a part of the material universe. The whole process of scientific investigation was thus reduced to the doctrine of bodies, beyond which, he maintained, there can be no knowledge whatever accessible to the human mind. This knowledge, however, does not refer simply to the ex- istence of bodies, but also to their changes, of all which changes the ultimate principle is motion. The doctrine of bodies, there- fore, includes the knowledge of all phenomena in relation to their probable causes ; and of all possible causes as known from their
observed effects The mind itself he viewed as wholly
material, the phenomena of consciousness being the direct result of our organization. The one great and fundamental fact of mind is sensation, which is nothing more or less than the effect of mate- rial objects around us, exerted by means of pressure or impact upon that material organization which we term the mind." ^ Thus it appears that Hobbes anticipated the great result of modern science, that all force may be resolved into motion.
LocTce (1632-1704). The introduction of Materialism into England during the last century is generally attributed to the influence of Locke's philoso- phy. Locke himself was far from being a Materialist, and the ad- vocates of Ills system strenuously insist tiiat his principles have no legitimate tendency to obliterate tlie distinction between matter and mind. Locke, however, in combating the doctrine of " innate ideas," in the sense of abstract truths, seemed to deny that the mind was so constituted as to apprehend truth intuitively, and be- yond the range of experience. He compared the mind to a " tab- ula rasa.^^ This figure suggests that all our knowledge is from without, as the slate contributes nothing to the matter written upon it. He defined ideas to be " anything with which the mind is immediately occupied when we think." The origin of these
1 Leviathan, chap. i.
» Morell's History of Modern Philosophy, New York, 1848, pp. Tl. 72,