force itself is absolutely inscrutable. This blots the soul and God out of existence, except as those words indicate an unknown force. But as he also holds that all forces are convertible, the distinction between material and mental forces, whether human or divine, is obliterated. He avails himself of the common assumption that his theory does not degrade spirit, but exalts matter. It is the verdict of history, however, as Julius M^iller truly says, " That every at- tempt to spiritualize matter ends in materializing spirit." On this subject Spencer says : " Men who have not risen above that vul- gar conception which unites with matter the contemptuous epithets ' gross ' and ' brute,' may naturally feel dismay at the proposal to reduce the phenomena of life, of mind, and of society, to a level with those which they think so degraded The course pro- posed does not imply a degradation of the so-called higher, but an elevation of the so-called lower." ^ This at least is an avowal that the phenomena of life, mind, and society are to be refeired to material or physical causes. This, indeed, he repeatedly asserts. After insisting on the transformation of physical forces into chemi- cal, and these into vital, he adds, " Many will be alarmed by the assertion that the forces which we distinguish as mental, come within the same generalization. Yet there is no alternative but to make this concession .^ .... Any hesitation to admit that be- tween the physical forces and the sensations there exists a correla- tion like that between the physical forces themselves, must disap- pear on remembering how the one correlation like the other, is not qualitive only, but quantitive." ^ " Various classes of facts unite to prove that the law of metamorphosis, which holds among the physical forces, holds equally between them and the mental forces. .... How this metamorphosis takes place — how a force exist-- ing as motion, light, or heat, can become a mode of consciousness," is mysterious ; but he adds, it is not a greater mystery " than the transformations of physical forces into each other." ^
Dr. Maudsley, a distinguished writer of the same school,^ says, " Few, if any, will now be found to deny that with each display of mental power there are correlative changes in the material sub- stratum ; that every phenomenon of mind is the result, as manifest energy, of some change, molecular, chemical, or vital, in the ner- vous elements of the brain." Again, he says,^ " With regard to the manifold phenomena of mind ; by observation of them, and abstraction from the particular, we get the general conception, or
1 Fira Principles, New York, 1869, p. 556. 2 JOid. p. 211. » Ibid. p. 212,
4 Ibid. p. 217. 5 Physiology and Pathology of Mind, Lond. 1868, p. 42. « Ibid. p. 43. VOL. I. 18
274 PART I.— THEOLOGY. [Ch. HI. - Anti-Theism.
the essential idea of mind, an idea which has no more existence out of the mind, than any other abstract idea or general term. In virtue, however, of that powerful tendency in the human mind to make the reality conformable to the idea, a tendency which has been at the bottom of so much confusion in philosophy, this gen- eral conception has been converted into an objective entity, and allowed to tyrannize over the understanding. A metaphysical ab- straction has been made into a spiritual entity and a complete bar- rier thereby interposed in the way of positive investigation."
The passages quoted above are a fair specimen of the kind of reasoning in which scientific men frequently indulge. In the first quotation, there are two clauses presented as equivalent, which are in fact essentially different ; and substituting the one for the other is just a silent and subtle begging of the question. The first says that every mental act is attended by a molecular change in the brain. The other in effect says, the molecular change is the mental act. These two propositions are as diflferent as day and night. The theory is that a certain kind of molecular motion in iron is heat ; and a certain kind of molecular motion in the brain is thought. And all the proof, as far as the latter is con- cerned, is that the one attends the other. But the formation of an image on the retina attends sight, and yet does not prove that the image is our consciousness when we see.
Again, in the second passage. Dr. Maudsley says that " mind is an abstract idea," which has no existence outside " of the mind," i. e.f outside of itself. An abstract idea has an abstract idea, which it makes into an objective entity. Men who deny the ob- jective existence of mind, can no more think, speak, or write with- out recognizing its existence, than an idealist can act without recognizing the existence of the external world. Any theory which involves a denial of the laws of our nature is of necessity absurd.
The Crerman Physicists.
As might be expected, the scientific men of the continent are more outspoken in their Materialism than those of England. A late German writer, Th. Otto Berger, Oberlehrer fur Mathematik und Physik,^ says : Materialism is the philosophy of the five senses, it admits nothing but on the testimony of sensation, and therefore denies the existence of the soul, of God, and of every- thing supersensuous. In its modern form, it teaches that as the material is alone true and real, it is uncreated and eternal. It
1 Evangelischcr Glavbe, romischer Irrglaube, und weltlicher Unglaube, Gotha, 1870.