the ranks of the teachers and expounders of dogmatic science, which, although pretentious and authoritative, must ever be in- tolerant and unprogressive." ^
Mental Phenomena. Not only are the operations of vegetable and animal life, accord- ing to the new doctrine, due to physical forces, but the same is true of all mental operations. If the argument from analogy is valid in the one case, it is valid in the other. If we must believe that the properties of protoplasm, or living matter, are to be referred to the mode in which its molecules are aggregated, because the prop- erties of water are due to the peculiar aggregation of the atoms of which its elements, hydrogen and oxygen, are composed ; then we must believe that all thought and feeling are due to the molec- ular composition and movements of the brain atoms. Accord- ingly, Professor Huxley, after saying that " vitality" has no better philosophical standing than " aquosity," warns his readers that they cannot stop with that admission. " I bid you beware," he says, " that in accepting these conclusions, you are placing your feet on the first rung of a ladder, which in most people's estimation is the reverse of Jacob's, and leads to the antipodes of heaven. It may seem a small thing to admit that the dull vital actions of a fungus or a foraminifer are the properties of their protoplasm, and are the di- rect results of the nature of the matter of which they are composed. But if, as I liave endeavored to prove to you, their protoplasm is essentially identical with, and most readily converted into, that of any animal, I can discover no logical halting-place, between the admission that such is the case, and the further concession that all vital action may with equal propriety be said to be the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it. And if so, it must be true, in the same sense and to the same extent, that the thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and jowv thoughts regarding them, are the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of our other vital phe- nomena." 2 " Further," he says, " I take it to be demonstrable that it is utterly impossible to prove that anything whatever may not be the effect of a material and necessary cause, and that human logic is equally incompetent to prove that any act is really spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is one which, by the as- sumption, has no cause \i. e. no material cause, for he admits no other] ; and the attempt to prove such a negative as this is, on the
1 Protoploim, p 4. 2 Lay Sermons, pp. 151, 152.
272 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. III. — Anti-Tueism.
face of the matter, absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical impossibility to demonstrate that any given phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any one who is acquainted with the history of science will admit that its progress has in all ages meant, and now more than ever means, the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity." ^ " After all, what do we know of this terrible ' matter,' except as a name for the unknown and hypothet- ical cause of states of our own consciousness ? And what do we know of that ' spirit ' over whose threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation is arising, .... except that it is also a name for an unknown and hypothetical cause or condition of states of consciousness ? In other words, matter and spirit are but names for the imaginary substrata of groups of natural phenomena." ^ *' As surely as every future grows out of past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.^ He cites the often-quoted exhortation of Hume, and enforces "the most wise advice" Avhich it contains. "If we take in our hand," says Hume, " any volume of divinity or school-met- aphysics, for instance ; let us ask, does it contain any abstract rea- soning concerning quantity or number ? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or existence ? No. Commit it, then, to the flames ; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." ^
The history of human speculation does not furnish a more ex- plicit avowal of Materialism than that contained in the above quo- tations. All known effects are ascribed to material causes. Spirit is declared to have only an imaginary existence. Spontaneity is pronounced an absurdity. Necessity is affirmed to be inexorable and universal. Yet Huxley says he is no Materialist. This in a sense is true. He is not a Materialist, because he believes in neither matter nor spirit. He avows himself a disciple of Hume, who taught that we know nothing but impressions and ideas. Sub- stance, whether material or spiritual, efficiency, and God, are ban- ished from the sphere of knowledge to that of " sophistry and illusion." He avows his fellowship with Herbert Spencer, the fundamental principle of whose " New Philosophy " is, that all we know, or can know, is, that force is and that it is persistent, while
1 Lay Sermons, pp. 155, 156. 2 JUd. p, 157. 8 Jlnd. p. 166.
* Home, Works, edit. Edinburgh, 1826, iv. p. 193.