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                          CHAPTER XXXII

                   The Triumph of Materialism

         Materialism and Idealism -- What Is Matter? --
      The Supposed Vital Principle -- The Human Machine --
     The Mystery of Consciousness -- Determinism and Morals

                    MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM

     FIFTY years of exceptionally industrious and varied study have
emboldened me to form a little mental picture of reality.

     I have, despite appearances, a sense of humor which forbids me
to say positively that my little mental picture is true: which
would mean that it is an exact copy, as far as it goes, of the
reality. I have no pride in it, but glance at it occasionally with
a cheerful cynicism, knowing that in a few years this labored
product of my fifty years of stress and toil will be a whiff of
smoke in the furnace of the crematorium down the road. But I have
searched the fields of time and space very diligently and have used
every kind of guide: the theologian and the philosopher, the
scientist and the historian, the poet and the essayist, the utopian
and the stern economist. And, if there were some Bank of Eternity
in which bets could be registered, I would wager a large share of
my heavenly nectar and ambrosia that in a thousand years men will
call this the truth about reality.

     It is what is commonly called Materialism. To follow the lead
of all great thinkers and get as far as possible away from those
little bits of reality, those individualities with their individual
thrills and throbs about which we make such a coil, let us say that
all truth is summed in the two words: Ether exists. Reality is
ether. What ether is we do not yet know, except that it curdles
into the minute particles or strain-centers which we call electrons
and protons, and these form matter, with which our perceptive
powers can deal. Stretching to infinity -- if there is any real
meaning in that word -- and running back and forth to eternity --
if there is any real meaning in that word -- is this mysterious
ether; and the matter which is formed from it gathers into great
globes which, as they draw in, develop such disturbance in their
interior that their substance streams out once more over space,
from which it was gathered, until, in the course of billions of
years, the equilibrium is restored, and the process begins again.
It is a meaningless and monotonous process. It is not a mystery. It
is a fact.

     Thus I think a God, if there were one "behind the universe" or
universes, would see the process with the eternal eye; and he would
be very much bored. But there is not one ripple on this material
ocean that suggests a spirit breathing upon it, if spirits can
breathe upon oceans: there is not one single feature of this
reality or of its monotonous processes that compels or persuades us
to think of a different reality beyond it.

     Before these masses of matter, or stars, melt again into the
ether from which they emerge they somehow engender a mind in which
the universe becomes conscious of itself and a heart which
experiences comedy and tragedy. We have not yet even an elementary
understanding of this evolution. Later I will tell why even here I

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do not admit that we have the least justification in thinking that
a different or spiritual reality enters the eternal process. For
the moment let me merely affirm -- admit -- that to me, at least,
this consciousness is at present very far beyond our power of
explanation, and it gives a dramatic interest to the world-process.

     Smaller globes roll round in the vitalizing flood from the
stars. On their slimy, steaming surfaces the atoms of matter
advance from combination to combination, during millions of years,
until the first living specks appear. This starts a new evolution
which culminates in the appearance of nerve, and this again an
evolution which ends in the appearance of the phosphorescence or
fluorescence that we call mind. A new universe, an aggregate of
separately conscious beings, appears: is appearing, and is found in
every phase of its development, probably on millions of the small
globes that dance in the stream of sunshine from the big globes. In
time these conscious units get adjusted to each other, and live as
harmoniously as do the atoms in the germ of life. In the eye of my
imaginary God the total story of life on one of these little globes
is a single pulse-beat of the eternal life. From part to part of
space the story shifts, running to shorter or greater length as the
accidents of time permit. Our human story is one of these
monotonous chapters in the unending process of the universe. It is
not a mystery, though still full of obscurities for us. It is a
mere fact.

     That is Materialism. I am not dogmatically affirming it, and
do not call myself a Materialist. When one reflects that the study
of reality, or science, is only a century old, and has a hundred
million years or more to run, it tickles one's sense of humor to
find people dogmatic. Yet I am convinced beyond ever a shadow of
doubt that Materialism is true. And the reason is at the same time
the explanation of the title of this chapter. The careful study of
reality is a hundred years old; and every single discovery we have
made in that time has supported Materialism. At the outset two
theories of reality, Materialism and Spiritualism, claimed
attention. Every one of the millions of discoveries we have made
confirms the Materialist and refutes the Spiritualist theory. That
is what I call the triumph of Materialism.

     There is no other subject which so urgently requires careful
and dispassionate consideration. This which I consider the final
truth about life and reality is bespattered with mud in all our
literature, and even the most learned of the writers who disdain
and revile it are guilty of quite elementary confusions of thought.
Some fancy, indeed, that I shrink from the epithet Materialist only
because it is held in such contempt, but readers of this book will
know that I express my sentiments with the candor of a child. I
have never the palest doubt that Materialism is true, and how I am
supposed to conciliate pious people by preferring to put my frame
of mind in these words, rather than use the dogmatic title
Materialist, it is difficult to see. But this verbal question will,
no doubt, answer itself as we proceed.

     For the moment what matters is to glance at the quite absurd
zeal of anti-materialists and point out their confusion. The chief
cause of the confusion is very simple. When men of science call


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Materialism absurd, you will generally find that they are masters
of physical science, and they have no competence whatever to say
whether Materialism is or is not absurd. In their branch of
science, the science of matter and energy, Materialism is supreme.
The question is whether it is sound in biology, the science of
life, and especially in psychology, the science of mind; and on
that point your Millikans and Lodges have not an atom of authority.
The late Professor Loeb and the living zoologist, Dr. Chalmers
Mitchell, know a thousand times more than physicists do on that
issue, and they call themselves Materialists. But, of course, when
a man is defending religion be need not be as scrupulous as a man
who is merely defending Materialism.

     The real absurdity is on the other side, and it is a good
illustration of what I call the chief fallacy about Materialism. I
have noticed some very oracular utterances of Professor Millikan on
this subject. It is quite simple, he thinks. First, there must be
a Something behind the universe because we have searched for a
hundred years and not found anything. I replied to this, with
becoming diffidence, that (1) the logical force of the deduction
does not seem to me entirely convincing, (2) that it seems to me
that our century of search has been in the universe and not behind
it. However, I've dealt with all that. What concerns us here is Dr.
Millikan's next step: that this Something must be spiritual,
because it is the source of "spiritual" realities which
unquestionably exist in the universe -- love, duty, and beauty. You
may think that I am caricaturing the expressions of Dr. Millikan --
who is a Doctor of Philosophy (or the art of thinking) as well as
a Doctor of Science -- so perhaps you would prefer to read his
words:

          Least of all am I disposed to quarrel with the man who
     spiritualizes nature and says that God is to him the soul of
     the universe, for spirit, personality, and all these abstract
     conceptions which go with it, like love, duty, and beauty,
     exist for you and for me just as much as do iron, wood, and
     water. They are in every way as real for us as are the
     physical things which we handle. ... In other words,
     Materialism, as commonly understood, is an altogether absurd
     and an utterly irrational philosophy, and is indeed so
     regarded by most thoughtful men.

     When we try to make a consecutive argument out of this
unfortunate jumble of words -- how, for instance, can abstract
conceptions be as real as iron? -- it must mean that love, duty,
and beauty are "spiritual" realities just as wood and iron are
material realities. And that is the root of the fallacy. To assume
that they are spiritual, and say that therefore they are aspects of
a spiritual soul and affects of a spiritual God, is "altogether
absurd and utterly irrational."

     We shall see later why philosophers argue that love, the
feeling of duty, and the appreciation of beauty -- to express the
matter in better English -- are spiritual. All that I want to say
here is that all this sacred fury against Materialism is based upon
the assumption that they are. That is bad enough, but the next step
taken by these paragons of clear thinking and austere character is


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quite childish. Since love and moral feelings and high thoughts and
emotions generally are spiritual, it follows, they say, that the
Materialist, since he admits matter only, rejects them altogether,
and therefore a world won over to Materialism would be a world
without love or ideals. One of these brilliant spiritual thinkers,
Dr. Warschauer, has drawn out the argument in a way that is almost
incredible. He imagines himself sitting next to a Materialist at a
concert and, seeing the Materialist enjoy a violin solo, he feels
he can, with Christian logic, turn upon the man and say: "There is
nothing for you to enjoy -- it is only horsehair scraping on
catgut!"

     That is quite the most bewildering form I have seen given to
the argument, but in one form or other it still pervades all our
literature. Once we lose our hold on spiritual realities, a woman
will have to wear armor and a gun when she goes shopping, our
politicians will degenerate, our very professors may lose their
delicate sense of responsibility. From California to Maine the
beautiful words flow from mellifluous lips and editorial pens,
"spiritual realities"; from Palm Beach to Hollywood we are taught
to shudder at the prospect of a triumph of Materialism.

     And I say that, not only is it a mere assumption that these
treasured things are spiritual, but the whole deluge of rhetoric
has behind it only one of the most slovenly caricatures of an
intellectual process that one can imagine. For this reason: the
Materialist does not deny the value of, the need to cultivate, high
thoughts and emotions; he merely denies that your theory of their
nature is correct. But can the matter really, you ask, be so simple
as this? It certainly is. If the whole world concluded tomorrow
that thought and emotion are mere functions of the brain, it would
not make one iota of practical difference. It is impossible to
suggest, in clear English, why it should make a difference, and no
one has ever given us a respectable reason for thinking it.

     The whole outcry is based upon a fallacy, a double fallacy.
One fallacy is that we use the word Materialism in two senses. One
is the sense in which I have used it: an intellectual theory of the
nature of reality without any practical implications. The other
meaning of the word is the opposite to Idealism: the absence of
ideals, a gross selfishness. They are two totally different
meanings of the word. And the other fallacy is to say that if we
come to reject the idea of spirit, we must reject ideals because
they are spiritual. It is infantile. There are Materialists, as
there are spiritualists, of every type, selfish and unselfish,
coarse and refined. Their theory of the nature of mind has,
obviously, nothing to do with it. I am, you will say, after the
confession I have made, a Materialist; but if any man were to tell
me that I cannot on that account prefer temperance and health to
drunkenness, cannot ask to have my life warmed with love, cannot
think straight and manly action preferable to hypocrisy, cannot
feel a keener pleasure in culture and art than in bridge or
billiards, I can only retort that he must be the last size in
fools. Our age, you will say, or preachers generally say, is
Materialistic; and I argue that it is the finest that has yet
entered the chronicle of man.



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     I have already quoted the highest Christian authorities on
ancient Greece and Rome to show that their life and idealism were
comparable with ours, and that this was due mainly to the Stoics
or, in Rome (where the social idealism was greatest), to a blend of
Stoicism and Epicureanism. There is, in fact, no other ancient
philosophy or religion that the serious theologian studies as a
rival to Christianity except Stoicism. But both the Stoics and the
Epicureans were dogmatic Materialists. They laughed at the idea of
"spirit"! It was a figment of the imagination, they said. And they
inspired the world as Christianity utterly failed to do. Next to
Zeno and Epicures as practical moralists, as men who really set
nations in a higher level of conduct, are Kong-fu-tse and Buddha;
and it was the very essence of their teaching that men should cease
to concern themselves about souls and gods and spirits. The next
great outflame of idealism was in the latter part of the eighteenth
century, and it was due to the Materialists of Paris -- Diderot,
Condorcet, Helvetius, Cabanis, Holbach, etc. Thomas Jefferson, one
of the greatest idealists of the early life of the United States,
was a dogmatic Materialist. My friend Dr. Loeb was a dogmatic
Materialist and an ardent idealist, and every other scholar of
modern times who has been described as a Materialist has been an
idealist, his manly courage and truthfulness contrasting
conspicuously with the conduct of his opponents.

     Yet in spite of all the logic and all the teaching of history,
this miserable twaddle, this musty piffle, about "the dangers of
Materialism," flows sonorously from every pulpit and is unctuously
repeated in dailies, weeklies, and monthlies. It is the classic
bunk of our time. It is a clotted mass of fallacies and confusions,
a betrayal of complete ignorance of the facts of social history, a
piece of verbiage that reflects on the intellectual vitality of
every man who repeats it, a crackling of thorns under the pot when
one reflects that our age improves in proportion as Materialism
advances.

     Further fallacies in connection with Materialism -- the word
seems to have the effect of paralyzing the pious mind -- will be
noticed as we proceed. We shall see that it is equally absurd and
untruthful to say that recent advances in physics have discredited
Materialism, or that there has been some mysterious retreat of
scientific men from "the Materialism of the last century," or that
Materialism affects conduct by denying the liberty of the will, and
so on. The whole subject is as laden with fallacious verbiage as
some old post by the sea is with barnacles. I have sufficiently
cleared the position for our inquiry. Materialism is neither an
inspiration nor the extinction of an inspiration. It has nothing to
do with inspiration. It is a theory of the nature of the universe,
not a standard for judging the relative values to man of things in
the universe. Whether you accept or reject it has no more to do
with your esteem of art, culture, and ideals than has your opinion
on surplus value or the Einstein theory of gravitation.

                         WHAT IS MATTER?

     The more enthusiastic people are about "spiritual things" the
less able you will find them to tell you what spirit is. I invite
the reader to try the experiment. Naturally the ordinary believers


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in spirituality will not be able to give you a definition of
spirit, but I predict that if you approach, without giving him time
to consult a dictionary, one of those eloquent apostles of, or
emphatic writers on, spirituality and ask for a definition of
spirit, you will not get one.

     Spirit is the opposite of matter and can only be described as
such. When mind is said to be spiritual, the only meaning is that
it is not material. We have therefore to define matter if we would
have a correct idea of the difference between matter and spirit.
The most popular definition is that matter is "something which
occupies space"; which sounds very satisfactory until you reflect
that space is not a sort of empty box into which you put matter --
if there were no matter, there would be no space -- but an abstract
conception. The mathematical definition of a point brings you a
little nearer. A point is said in your Euclid to be that which "has
parts and no magnitude"; but, unfortunately, it has also no
substance. It is an abstract idea. Matter is a substance or reality
with parts and magnitude (or "extension" or "quantity"): spirit is
a substance or reality with neither parts nor magnitude.

     It is worth while reflecting on these definitions and getting
a clear idea of them. Even the majority of the men and women who
are so zealous about spirituality feel a chill when you bring them
down to exact definitions. Can one imagine the vital interests of
civilization really depending upon the question whether love and
duty are quantitative or non-quantitative realities? You get right
to the heart of the tangle of silly confusions in which this whole
question of the material and the spiritual is wrapped. You see at
once that the only issue of any real importance or interest is, not
whether the mind is material or spiritual, but whether it is mortal
or immortal, and since the great majority even of the philosophers
and psychologists who believe the mind to be spiritual, do not
believe it to be immortal, the controversy becomes rather insipid.

     But a new source of confusion has been provided by recent
advances in physics. Twenty years ago, when radium was discovered
and it was found that the atom of matter is composed of electrons,
the cry was raised that Materialism was discredited. The "solid
atom," the "indestructible atom," of "dead matter," proved to be
very much alive, and to be distillable into still tinier particles.
Although even university teachers of physics (with a tincture of
religion, of course) joined in this cry, it was ridiculous.

     If you had asked one of these men to name a couple of
Materialists, he would at once have said Professor Haeckel and Dr.
Ludwig Buchner. Well, take the two most famous "Materialistic books
of these men: Haeckel's "Riddle of the Universe" and Buchner's
"Force and Matter." Not only did both men deny that they were
Materialists, but both actually predicted that the atom of matter
would be found to be composed of tinier particles of something
else. Buchner (p. 47) strongly recommends the theory that atoms are
compacted, ultimately, of ether, and insists that atoms "consist of
units of a higher grade" (p. 49). This was written fifty years
before radium was discovered. Haeckel's "Riddle" was written Just
before the discovery of the real nature of atoms, yet he also
maintained that the atoms of matter were composed of particles of


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a simpler substance and that ether is the ultimate reality (p. 77,
cheap edition). I may complete this exposure of the absurdity of
the spiritual cry of triumph by pointing out that the men who
really did call the atom indestructible and final were religious
physicists like Clerk-Maxwell and the Christian apologists who
built on them; and the reason for it was that in this way they
could represent the atom as "a manufactured article" and so prove
the existence of a creator! It is one more illustration of the
utter superficiality of "spiritual" writers on Materialism.

     The discovery that an atom of matter consisted of tinier
particles called electrons and protons not only did not cut the
ground from under the feet of Materialists, as belated Christian
writers still say, but it was precisely part of what I call the
triumph of Materialism. Writers who were called Materialists in the
nineteenth century -- chiefly Buchner, Moleschott, Voyt, and
Haeckel expected and hoped for this discovery. The reason is very
simple. There is a natural tendency of the mind to seek one
ultimate principle, and these writers, seeing that physics spoke of
two ultimate substances, matter and ether, were anxious that some
closer connection of matter and ether should be established. The
discovery of the composition of the atom seemed to be a fulfillment
of their hope and prophecy. Many distinguished physicists held that
the electrons were centers of condensation or disturbance in ether.
Therefore matter was, as I have poetically said, a curdling of
either. Ether was the ultimate reality.

     Of late years there has been in the sanctuary a fresh cry of
triumph that physics has "cut the ground from under the feet of the
Materialist." Scientific men began to say that the electron was a
particle of electricity," and so electricity was the ultimate
reality known to us. It was quite absurd to call this, even if it
were true, a "death-blow to Materialism." The electron, whatever it
was, had dimensions or quantity. It occupied space. It was measured
and was found to have a diameter of five-trillionths of an inch. It
weighed eleven octillionths of an ounce. Physicists were quite
free, if they wished, to give a new meaning to the word
electricity, which had hitherto been spoken of as an "energy," but
quite clearly the electrons were realities or substances which
occupied space, or material realities.

     But the controversy ran on. In order to explain it I must
point out, as I have done at length in my "Marvels of Modern
Physics," that modern physicists are so much engrossed in
mathematical reasoning that they are apt to take abstractions for
realities. They began to say that there was no proof at all of the
existence of ether, and that electrons and protons, the tiny
particles which compose the atoms of matter, are "energy." The
ultimate or only reality that they could find, they said, was
energy. Some, like Professor Ostwald in Germany, a distinguished
Rationalist as well as physicist, wanted us to label ourselves
Energists.

     To this I objected, and some of my friends in the physical
world agree with me that they are entirely changing the meaning of
the word "energy." In every manual of physics "energy" and "force"
are still defined as abstract ideas. As Sir Oliver Lodge once said,


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the only realities known to the physicist are matter and movement;
and it would obviously be better to say matter in motion, or moving
matter. The physicist sees matter at rest (apparently) or doing
work (by movements). Its capacity for doing work is its "energy";
when it is doing work it is displaying "force." They are defined as
abstract ways of regarding the movements of matter.

     Physicists may, of course, change the meaning of words in
their science when they will, but they did not, and from the
philosophical point of view the situation became very peculiar.
Some went so far as to say that all they actually perceive in the
material world is action"; to which a philosopher, or even a very
ordinary person like myself, would justly retort that no one ever
saw an action. What you see is an agent, something acting. So, if
energy is now to be taken in the sense of something which does
work, instead of the abstract capability of something to do work,
we are not much disturbed.

     This will be clearer if I remind the reader what an atom of
matter is now supposed to be. It consists of very minute particles
called protons and electrons. Than the very minute diameter of the
electron I need say only that the proton is many times smaller. An
atom of hydrogen, the lightest matter, consists of one proton and
one electron. Heavier atoms have a nucleus or stationary center of
protons and electrons, packed together, and a number of electrons
at various distances from the nucleus. The easiest way to picture
the atom is as a sort of miniature solar system, the nucleus
representing the stationary sun in the center, and the electrons
revolving at tremendous speed round it. But there is another
theory, the Lewis-Langmuir theory, which represents the electrons
as gyrating rapidly at fixed distances from the nucleus, not
revolving round it. This difference does not concern us.

     Now, since both protons and electrons have measurable
dimensions, they come under the only acceptable definitions of
matter. They are quantitative. They occupy space. You may call them
energy or electricity or what you like, but they are the material
units of the universe. In recent years the strange discovery has
been made that the mass of an electron (the quantity of matter in
it) varies with its speed. Even this need not disturb us as, unless
it were material, it would obviously not have any mass or quantity
to vary. In my own opinion this is one of the strongest proofs that
the electron in some way arises out of ether, but this is not the
place to discuss the matter. In any case, the proton is a fixed
measurable quantity: a material reality. We have so far fulfilled
the expectation of the Materialists of the nineteenth century.
Atoms are dissolved into more minute and homogeneous particles.

     And within the last two years ether has been restored to its
position. It would not matter in the least to Materialism if there
were no ether. We should just recognize that the universe
consisted, in the ultimate analysis, of two different kinds of
material units, electrons and protons. In the hottest stars the
atoms of matter are broken up into these elements, and they come
together again to form atoms as the star cools. Astronomy gives us
beautiful illustrations of the evolution of matter itself: and the
floods of electrons pour out into distant space, and may some day


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prove the clue to the origin of the great nebulae from which stars
are made. However that may be, Materialism has completely triumphed
in astronomy. We have wiped out all traces of that "finger of God"
which was formerly supposed to be clearly seen in the heavens.

     But the mind has a kind of instinct to seek one fundamental
reality, and, moreover, what we call the energies of the universe
(light, heat, etc.) could be best explained as ripples or
undulations in ether. Physicists and mathematicians had begun to
tell us that they needed no ether to understand light and magnetism
and electricity, but in point of fact their explanations were not
explanations. They were mathematical formulae, and they left a good
deal to be desired. If there was nothing except atmosphere (which
counts for nothing in this connection) between the antennae of a
wireless transmitting station and your receiving wires, no waves in
ether or anything of the sort transmitted from the one point to the
other, wireless would be a hopeless mystery. If space were entirely
empty between the sun and the earth, it would be quite impossible
to imagine how the dancing of electrons in the super-heated
photosphere of the sun could, as it does, make the face of the
earth visible to our eyes and scorch our faces.

     We need not pursue this, however. Professor Michelson and Mr.
Dayton Miller have, by a most ingenious apparatus, proved that the
ether does exist. At the very time when I was venturing to write my
complete dissent from the teaching of distinguished physicists and
Einsteinians about ether, Mr. Dayton Miller, taking up afresh the
apparatus devised by Professor Michelson, was proving the reality
of ether. I am, in fact, told by a friend of Professor Michelson's
that that very able American physicist holds that his experiments
proved the reality of ether years ago.

     It is, at all events, now admitted, and so we have three
ultimate realities in the material world: ether, protons, and
electrons. All occupy space, or have dimensions or extension. Every
single cavil at Materialism in this connection is, therefore,
discredited. We have reduced all the infinite variety of matter in
the universe to three fundamental types. The chemist reduces all
material combinations to ninety-two elements or types of atoms: the
physicist shows that these ninety-two different atoms are simply
larger or smaller clusters of electrons and protons.

     The next step that Materialism would like to see would be the
proof that the electrons and protons are specks or condensations or
centers of some sort in ether. That would be a grand unification of
the material universe, for already we have brought all the so-
called energies (light, heat, etc.) into line as electro-magnetic
waves set up in ether by vibrating electrons. That would complete
the triumph of Materialism in the inorganic world.

     That this is the real nature of electrons and protons has been
held by many distinguished physicists for years, but it is by no
means yet proved. In the picture of the universe with which I
opened this chapter I spoke of the science of the future. I said
that this will, in my opinion, prove to be the case. The one
ultimate reality will prove to be ether, in which arise (and back
into which may possibly dissolve) the little centers we call


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electrons and protons. A prominent physicist suggested long ago
that they might be minute vortices or whirlpools in ether, one
revolving to the right, the other to the left, thus explaining
positive and negative electricity. It is one illustration of the
various possibilities. But we must not forget that even if we fail
to discover any closer connection between ether and these minute
particles -- if ether, protons and electrons remain distinct -- it
makes no difference to Materialism. They are all measurable or
quantitative. Materialism has triumphed over every attempt to
discredit it on the ground of new discoveries in physics.

     Many physicists define matter as that which possesses inertia,
or does not move until it is moved. This is not an essential
definition. It is simply a description of one aspect of the
behavior of what we commonly call matter. A billiard ball will not
move until it is pushed. But when we try to work out this in regard
to protons, electrons, and ether, we find ourselves checked by the
scantiness of our knowledge. This need not disturb us. Ether is
obviously, whatever else it may be, something that occupies space,
and has parts and magnitude. It is material.

                  THE SUPPOSED VITAL PRINCIPLE

     So far we have not been examining attempts to prove that the
immaterial or the spiritual exists. No one ever went so far as to
claim that matter had been dissolved into spirit or something that
was not material. Religious apologists who picked up scraps of
physics and represented this did not know what they were talking
about. Even if matter had been "resolved into energy," as some
said, or into electricity -- which is an absurd statement, as the
two billion stars of the universe remain just what they were we
should still be in a world of measurable realities. Planck's
quantum theory, which is now generally received in physics, makes
energy more material (i.e., more quantitative) than ever.

     However, we have cleared up all these misunderstandings, and
we have now to consider the arguments of those who hold that the
energies or movements of a living thing are due to the presence in
it of an immaterial something which they call "the vital
principle., We have not to go into all the arguments on this
matter, but merely to ask whether the progress of science has
favored the Materialist or the opposite theory.

     We may simplify the issue by first putting on one side certain
controversies which were settled long ago, though many of the
"spiritual" writers do not seem to be yet aware of the fact. There
is no serious controversy today about the origin of life. Much dust
is raised about it by the more ignorant apologetic writers, but it
is a legitimate scientific question, and, as the authorities are
agreed that the first living things came upon the earth by natural
evolution, and the only opposition to this comes from men who rely
upon a disputed interpretation of the Babylonian legends in
Genesis, we might at once pass on. Some readers may, however, wish
to understand precisely what the position is, as they may have
Catholic or Fundamentalist friends who still think that there are
profound scientific difficulties about the natural origin of life.



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     Excluding an old suggestion that the germs of life may have
come to this globe from other planets, we have only two possible
modes of origin: creation or evolution. Seeing that it is now
certain that all the higher forms of life were evolved from the
lowest, scientific men and all who consult their common sense
assume that the earliest living things themselves were evolved from
inorganic matter unless there is some intrinsic impossibility. No
one has ever shown any. It does not, therefore, matter that we have
no direct evidence of the evolution of life or that we cannot make
living things in the laboratory today. Scientists can only
speculate as to the series of chemical changes by which, in the
course of ages, inorganic matter evolved into simple forms of life.
Many do speculate on this, and they -- chemists like Professor
Armstrong or bio-chemists like Professor Benjamin Moore -- say that
there is no inherent difficulty.

     You may simplify the matter in this way. There are two views
about the origin of life. One says that the first living things
were evolved and on this all the biologists, chemists, and bio-
chemists -- a formidable body of experts -- are agreed. The other
view is that the first forms of life were created. The sole ground
for saying this is that some theologians hold that the first
chapter of Genesis says so. The great majority even of theologians
are opposed to them, and we know quite independently that this
story of creation is merely an ancient Babylonian guess. Well, your
friend may use his common sense and choose. But if his literature
tells him that there is any dispute in science about the matter, it
is, as usual, lying.

     The truth of Materialism here is that, whereas half a century
ago scientific men were certainly not agreed upon the subject, and
high authorities could be quoted for the creation of life, they are
now absolutely agreed upon the evolution of life. Such questions
are within the province of the new science of bio-chemistry -- the
science of the chemistry of living matter -- and the effect of its
research has been to bring about an agreement.

     But this agreement must be properly understood. It does not at
all mean that all the experts have become Materialists. Some of
them believe that there is in the living organism a directive or
controlling principle which is different from ordinary physical or
chemical forces. They do not seem to like the word "immaterial" and
they often shrink from the phrase "vital principle"; but it comes
to the same thing. They believe that there is something in the
living organism beyond the gases and earths which compose its body
and the chemical and physical properties of those elements.

     When you ask what this is, and where it comes from, you get
much verbiage and very little satisfaction. Sir Oliver Lodge talks
about a sort of "reservoir" of vital energy which may be drawn
upon, but it is a mistake to take any notice of what men like
Kelvin and Lodge (who are physicists) say on this matter. As to
G.B. Shaw, the great popular apostle of the vital principle, which
he calls God, you might as well expect clear economic definitions
from Billy Sunday or Bebe Daniels as clear statements on such
matters from Mr. Shaw. When he tells the world that Vitalism has
triumphed, and Materialism been refuted, in the last few years, he


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is talking nonsense. He really means that a very wordy philosopher
in France, Professor Bergson, wrote a popular book, full of errors,
on the vital principle a few years ago, which Mr. Shaw approved,
but even the philosophers rejected it. What the real scientific
authorities say about it Mr. Shaw neither knows nor cares. He hates
science.

     The position is, then, that a certain number of biologists
believe in a vital principle which is not a material force. Where
it came from when chemical evolution had prepared the plasm to
receive it they barely attempt to explain. No scientific man now
believes in creation out of nothing. The idea is justly regarded as
childish. In fact, the leading Vitalists of Germany and Britain,
and, I suspect, of America (though these are more reticent) do not
believe in a personal God. I refer to Professor Driesch and Dr. J.
Haldane. The general feeling of the Vitalist scientists is that
this vital principle or energy exists in nature just as electricity
or magnetism does. It is supposed to control the physical forces of
the body, to direct them in the germ when they are building up the
body, and so on.

     Before we examine this idea, we must notice a statement of Dr.
Osborne in "The Earth Speaks to Bryan." It has been quoted all over
America and throughout the English-speaking world as an emphatic
assurance on the part of a distinguished man of science that
scientific men have in large part abandoned their earlier
Materialism and come to believe in an immaterial vital principle.
Unfortunately for his credit, Dr. Osborne ventured to give names,
and one is amazed at the slovenliness of his statement. His list
includes Dr. Millikan (a physicist, who knows next to nothing about
Vitalism), Professor Eucken (a German religious philosopher who
knows still less), Professor J.B.S. Haldane, author of "Daedalus"
(confusing the father, Dr. J. Haldane, a Vitalist, with the son,
Dr. J.B.S. Haldane, who wrote "Daedalus," and is emphatically not
a Vitalist), and Dr. Walter Rathenau (a German business man who is
entirely innocent of such matters). These are supposed to be proofs
that experts on biology are abandoning Materialist views and
returning to Vitalism! There is no return. The few experts whom Dr.
Osborne could legitimately quote as Vitalists -- MacBride, A.
Thomson, J.A. Haldane, etc. -- were Vitalists twenty years ago, and
have never been otherwise.

     Religion is always at the back of these strained and
inaccurate statements of scientific men. Twenty years ago Lord
Kelvin, the eminent British physicist, made the same statement in
London. He said that "modern biologists were coming once more to
the acceptance of something and that was a vital principle." He was
at once flatly and publicly contradicted by the three leading
authorities in Britain at the time, Sir J. Burdon-Sanderson, Sir
W.T. Thiselton-Dyer, and Sir E. Ray Lankester. The latter said: "I
do not myself know of anyone of admitted leadership among modern
biologists who is showing signs of coming to a belief in the
existence of a vital principle." He would say the same today to
Professor Osborne. There is no change. A small minority of
biologists believe in a vital principle, and have always done so.
There is no desertion of Materialism.



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     In point of fact, if you survey a period of, say seventy
years, since the appearance of Darwin, you must admit the triumph
of Materialism. In the middle of the last century the overwhelming
majority of the biologists and physiologists were Vitalists. The
great majority are now Anti-Vitalists. They are not Materialists --
they do not pronounce on the nature of the human mind, on which
they have no authority -- but they reject the idea of a vital
principle in plants and animals. This immense change in about half
a century from a large majority in favor to a large majority
against Vitalism may justly be considered another triumph of
Materialism.

     One very good reason for the change in the direction of
Materialism is that no one can give us an idea of this vital
principle which is intellectually satisfactory. You see this
plainly in the different names that are given to it by different
Vitalist writers; in fact, they now even dislike the word Vitalist,
and call themselves Neo-Vitalists. But the "new" theory has just
the same difficulties as the old. "Vital Force," as this immaterial
something used to be called, and Mr. Shaw still calls it, is a
crude expression. A "force" is not a reality and does not do
things. "Vital Principle" is merely an evasion. "Vital Urge"
(Bergson's glan vital) is still worse. Some even go back to
Aristotle and dig up the old Greek word "Entelechy." Others play
with "Directive Idea," and so on. There is obviously something
uncomfortable about the whole theory.

     There are three very sound general reasons for this uneasiness
of the Vitalists. The first is that they are merely building upon
our ignorance, which is always unsafe and generally illogical, for
what is obscure today may be lit up tomorrow. Whatever Vitalists or
Neo-Vitalists say, there is only one valid argument for dragging in
a vital principle: that there is something in the life of an
organism which the physical and chemical properties of its body
cannot explain, so we postulate some other kind of agency to
explain it. The weakness of this is clear. What we really mean is,
not that physical and chemical qualities will not explain
something, but that we with our present knowledge of those
qualities cannot explain it. But our knowledge is growing daily.
The Materialist can afford to wait. In point of fact, the majority
of biologists prefer to wait. When our knowledge of the physical
properties of living matter is much more extensive than it is we
shall be in a better position to judge. Meantime Vitalism is not an
explanation, but an affirmation.

     Men like Professor A. Thomson, who have somehow become popular
oracles on science, pretend that some of the discoveries we have so
far made favor Vitalism and not Materialism, and they give a quite
wrong impression. Professor Thomson is a religious man -- as I
said, you generally find religion at the back of these things --
and is not an expert biologist, but a lecturer on natural history
(the exterior of animals, so to say, not the interior). All that
such men can say is that there are still, in spite of a century of
research, scores of things that we do not understand in the living
body, How an oak tree or a peacock is built up out of a microscopic
germ is an obvious case. In spite of Weismannism and Menderism and
all the rest I should candidly admit that we do not in the least


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understand it. There is a great deal of sheer verbiage in these
theories of heredity. And we need not select a big and obvious
problem like this. The ultimate processes even in the assimilation
of food, the contraction of muscles, or the action of nerves, are
still obscure.

     But how in the name of all that is wonderful does this
discredit Materialism? We have learned how to explain thirty things
out of fifty, and the explanation is purely mechanical. The
remaining twenty are more complicated and at present evade
explanation. Surely the common-sense conclusion is that the
mechanical explanation of the thirty is a triumph for Materialism,
and it gives us some confidence that we shall yet explain the other
twenty. Professor Thomson argues that our research into the
activity of almost every tissue in the body has brought us to a
point where our mechanical explanation fails. If Vitalists think
that they light up these obscurities by saying that a mysterious
vital principle causes the movements, they are singularly easy to
satisfy. A mere word explains nothing. They are imitating the
medieval wise-acres who explained the properties of water by saying
that they were due to something called "aquosity," or thought that
the life of a cabbage is all explained when you say that it has a
"vegetative soul." The plain truth is that, as we get near the
limits of the range of our microscopes, obscurity is bound to begin
in every field of research. Already we are developing a super-
microscope, an instrument using ultra-violet rays and quartz
lenses, and the line of darkness will be pushed back. What power of
magnification will anatomists be using in 3000 A.D., not to speak
of 3,000,000 AD.?

     Another difficulty is that, as the variety of names for the
vital principle suggests, no one has ever been quite comfortable
about the substantiality of this deus ex machine. Many try to evade
the difficulty by calling it an energy, or force, or urge, or even
idea. But we are not children. All these things are abstract
conceptions, not realities, but certain aspects of realities. Even
the word "principle" is mere poetry. This vital agent is either a
substance or an aspect of some substance. It is futile to say that
philosophers have discredited the word "substance." What they have
discredited is the old distinction between substance and accidents,
which enables, a Catholic to believe that the smell and taste of
wine can remain when the wine disappears. It is a substance or
nothing; and no one cares to face the problem of how an immaterial
substance is mixed up with a body. The whole Vitalist and Neo-
Vitalist school evades these difficulties and simply offers us
phrases.

     Thirdly, even if we do not press the preceding difficulty, the
theory, when you work it out patiently, brings in far more serious
problems than it pretends to solve. It is, as I said, a mystery how
a body is developed out of an impregnated ovum, and I can
understand a man impulsively saying that there must be something
else. But try to work it out. Has this something else a plan of
what it has to build? Does it somehow communicate this to the atoms
of matter? Does it direct the atoms into place, in the developing
nerve or muscle, and how? Does it push them into place as a
bricklayer pushes bricks? And how can an immaterial agent push or


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direct them? And would not the vital principle of even the lowest
microbe, which is supposed to do what all the science of our time
cannot do -- make a living cell -- be a greater thing than the mind
of an Edison? And so on. Once again the only reply is: evasion.
Don't press, the Vitalists say. Let us talk vaguely about
"directive forces" and "vital urges."

     It is a failure from beginning to end, and that failure means
the triumph of Materialism. As the next section will show, every
explanation that we have really given of vital processes in the
course of the last hundred years is a mechanical or chemical
explanation. Every discovery has been thrown into the Materialist
scale against the Immaterialist. I am old enough to remember scores
of obscurities which were once urged against the Materialist -- as
a Catholic professor of philosophy I myself urged them thirty years
ago -- and they have all been cleared up on mechanical lines. The
logic is all on the side of the Materialist. Understand his
position. It is not that today we can give a mechanical explanation
of everything. It is that the mechanical principle has so far made
all the discoveries we have made and we have no positive reason for
supposing that there are any processes in the living thing that it
will not in time explain; but, even if there were, it would not
follow that the agent at work in them was not material.

                        THE HUMAN MACHINE

     Many of my readers will have read "The Outline of Science" and
may remember one of the leading articles in it entitled "The Body
Machine": a summary of the anatomy and physiology of the human
body. I wrote that article. Professor A. Thomson, who succeeded me
in the editing of the work, and suppressed my name, merely appended
to my article, which he used, a note in the interest of his
Vitalist views, warning readers not to take the word "machine"
literally. But the article remains a most instructive summary of
all the wonderful things that have been discovered about the animal
body and its life by working on mechanical lines. Nothing was ever
discovered by means of Vitalist principles.

     Here some reader might remind me that Professor Bergson was
supposed by many to have thrown a great deal of light on living
nature in his "Creative Evolution" by means of Vitalist principles.
Not one single phenomenon in nature was explained by him. He
followed the usual Vitalist or mystic procedure. Here is some piece
of behavior on the part of an animal which science cannot explain:
let us attribute it to a "vital urge" or "impulse," and then, of
course, it is explained. Those are mere words.

     An amusing illustration may be given. The remarkable
"instincts" of insects especially fascinated Professor Bergson, as
they fascinate mystics generally. Ants, bees, and wasps,
particularly, are supposed to afford excellent material to the
mystic by their interesting habits. One wasp selected by Professor
Bergson was the Sphex, or "wasp-anatomist," which is popularly
described (following the ancient observer of insects, Fabre) as
having quite an uncanny knowledge. In order to provide fresh meat
for the offspring which it will never see, it is supposed to grasp
insects and sting them in their nervous ganglia in such a way as to


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paralyze their struggles without killing them, and then lay them in
the nest with the eggs. How does a wasp come to have this knowledge
of the position of the nervous ganglia? The "vital urge," said
Bergson; although, curiously enough, he does not seem to give this
vital principle itself any intelligence. However, the point is that
some years before Bergson wrote this book, the old story had been
corrected. More patient and extensive research on the part of two
American observers had shown that the wasp merely jabbed its sting
anywhere into its struggling prey; in most cases it did not touch
the ganglia.

     There are, however, a great many "instincts" of animals,
especially of insects, that we cannot explain. I put the word
instincts in inverted commas because it is now hardly ever used by
scientific men. The idea that there is a "faculty" or something in
the bird which "tells" it to build its nest, or in the ant which
"tells" it to store food and assign nurses for the eggs, is now
abandoned. Instinctive behavior is as automatic as the lifting of
your hand when a speck of dust brushes against your eye, or the
budding of trees in the spring: the animal receives a certain
stimulation, and it reacts to this by movements of its muscles as
automatically as a plant grows round an obstacle. In simpler cases
we trace the mechanical course of the action quite easily, and we
have no reason to suppose that it is other than mechanical even in
the case of the ant, the bee, the wasp, or the beaver.

     I will give a case which is not wholly simple. A moth enters
your room on a summer's night, sails round and round the room, and
finally dashes against the lamp or commits suicide in the candle.
The "vital urge" is hard put to explain these things. But it is a
simple mechanical action. The moth is a flying machine with motors
for both sides of the body and an eye for each side. The light
falling on one eye stimulates the motor for one side, and it sails
round the room, just as a boat would with only one of its two
screws going. Let the moth, however, chance to face the candle in
its erratic movements. The light then falls equally on both eyes,
stimulates both motors, and the moth heads straight for the light.

     We have explored and explained a very large amount of animal
and plant behavior on these mechanical lines, for light is only one
of a number of different stimulations. Hundreds of thousands of
experiments along these lines have been tried, and a vast amount of
animal "psychology" has been explained. Some of the highest
authorities now question whether insects have any consciousness
whatever. That they have no "intelligence" was settled by
experiment long ago. They seem to be, in the language of modern
physiology, simply chemical machines.

     The human body is full of mechanisms like any other body,
though in our case intelligence has generally superseded instinct.
From the moment, for instance, that food enters the mouth -- indeed
from the moment when appetizing food meets the eye or tickles the
nostrils -- until the moment when the nutritious particles are
assimilated and the refuse ejected, a long series of most intricate
and ingenious mechanisms is called into play. From the moment when
light falls on the eye, or waves of sound break upon the ear-drum,
or particles of odorous matter enter the nostrils, until the hand


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is raised for appropriate action, there is another series of
mechanisms at work. But nerve is much more difficult to understand
than muscle or gland, and the nerve-stuff in the brain, which is
the most complicated matter in the universe, is even more difficult
to explain. Significant, isn't it, that the Vitalist finds his
phenomena just where the material structure is most obscure?

     But even here all progress is in the Materialist direction.
Take the problem of embryology. From a fertilized ovum (or egg-
cell) in a woman's womb there is developed in the course of nine
months that most amazingly complex structure, the human body.
Although Mendelist science has certainly helped us in some ways in
discovering that there are special particles in the germ for each
section of the body that is to be constructed, it is futile to say
that we are appreciably nearer understanding how a germ creates a
body. But some very remarkable work has been done in what is called
"experimental embryology," and it does not in the least favor the
idea that there is an immaterial principle in the germ which
directs the physical and chemical forces.

     One striking result of experiment is the discovery that we can
dispense entirely with the male germ, or spermatozoon. The reader
will know that a female ovum does not begin to split up and begin
to form a body until a male cell enters and blends with it. This
was naturally thought to be the explanation of the fact that the
young inherits from the father as well as the mother. Both germs
were thought to be of equal importance. But scientists were
astonished when they discovered that if the ovum is pricked with a
needle -- other mechanical or chemical stimulations have the same
effect -- it begins to divide just as if it had been fertilized by
a male, and it goes on to form a complete normal body. Star-fish
and sea-urchins are the animals most commonly used in these
experiments, as it is easy to control the sperm, but Professor Loeb
found that frogs' eggs could be "fertilized" in the same way, and
he sent me a photograph of a two-year-old frog, normal in every
respect, which he had produced from an egg without a father. Up to
what level in the animal world we can produce this result we do not
yet know. The imagination reels at the conjecture that we may yet
accomplish it with the human ovum.

     In many other ways experimental embryologists have brought out
the essentially mechanical nature of the construction of a body
from a germ. Dual animals, half animals, and all kinds of
perversions and distortions of the embryonic process, have been
caused. It is not simply that the experimenter is interfering with
the attempt of some immaterial force in the germ to realize a plan.
He is interfering rather with mechanical forces and so misdirecting
their play that they cause all kinds of monstrosities. Experimental
physiology -- experiments on the living body of adult animals of
the lower (and unconscious) types such as sea-anemones, worms, etc.
-- has led to similar results. The working of the forces inherent
in the organism is altered just as mechanically as we can alter the
combination of chemicals.

     This mass of research and experiment, which in every
particular confirms the Materialist view of the animal organism,
has been strongly reinforced in recent years by the discovery of
the ductless glands. There has been such an extensive public

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interest in one pair of these glands, the thyroid glands, that the
reader will have some idea of what we mean by these ductless or
endocranial glands. They are very small glands in the interior of
the body which secrete from the blood minute quantities of certain
substances, or manufacture these substances from the chemicals they
extract from the blood, and they then pour the result directly into
the blood-stream. The circulation of the blood carries these
precious essences through the system until they reach the organs
for which they are intended. The tissues of these organs extract
them from the blood as it flows through, and are stimulated. As a
scientific writer said, it is a kind of postal service in the body.
We have long known that in our nerves we have a telegraphic system.
Now we know that in these hormones (as the mysterious essences
produced by the glands are called) we have also a postal system.

     These glands have turned out to possess an importance which,
in view of their size, scientific men had never suspected. It has
been known for decades that the thyroid glands, in the neck, have
a surprising influence on mental vitality, and thyroid extract
(generally from sheep) has been used from the beginning of the
century in converting cretins (congenital idiots, or children born
with abnormally feeble thyroid glands) into normal children. It is
an extension of this discovery in recent times which has led to all
the popular interest in the glands as a possible means of renewing
the vitality of the aged. But it is only in recent years that we
have discovered that the thyroids are only one of a number of pairs
of small glands, or single glands, which have a remarkable
importance. There are the thymus glands (which regulate nutrition
and blood-pressure in the young), the parathyroid glands (which
help to keep the balance of nerve and muscle, and are essential to
life), and the adrenal glands (which control the blood and help to
resist poison, and also are essential to life). Then, in the brain,
are the pituitary body, which seems to control growth (especially
of the bones), and the pineal body, which seems to have an
influence on bodily and mental development. Some of these minute
organs are probably what we call vestigial organs," or vestiges of
organs which were useful in a different way in a remote animal
ancestor. Their evolutionary significance as such remains just the
same, although they have taken on new functions.

     Corresponding to these glands are the minute quantities of
chemicals in our food which we call vitamins. Some of them are a
kind of special diet of the glands, and are correspondingly
important. When we have mastered the chemical constitution of
vitamins and hormones -- when we can produce either the vitamins or
the gland-products in the chemical laboratory -- we shall be able
to work wonders. The moron can be doctored out of existence, and it
may transpire that we can raise everybody's mental level. All that
I am concerned with for the moment, however, is that this discovery
merely crowns a long series of discoveries which tell in favor of
Materialism. We are extending the mechanical explanation of the
life of the body every decade. We are discovering new mechanisms
which explain what were thought to be mysterious vital functions.
We have found that the milk appears in a mother's breast just when
it is needed because the foetus secretes and passes into the
mother's blood a certain chemical which stimulates her milk-glands.
In every department of the body we are finding such mechanisms, and


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there are few physiologists in the world who will now admit that a
"vital principle" is needed or would explain anything if we
admitted it. The whole progress of physiology has been a triumph of
Materialism. Science is still young, and plenty of obscurities
remain, but all that we have actually discovered is mechanical. The
Materialist has thousands of facts to support him. The Vitalist
builds only on obscurities, or on things not yet discovered.

                  THE MYSTERY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

     Physiologists prefer to say that they give a "mechanical"
rather than a "Materialist" explanation of life, because
Materialism means a comprehensive philosophy of the universe. It
means that spirit does not exist anywhere. With that the
physiologist is not concerned. The mental life of man does not fall
within his province. It is the subject of psychology. What the
physiologist says is that by his research he has explained the
greater part of the life of the body as the functioning of a system
of mechanisms: he has never made any discovery or explained
anything on Vitalist lines: and he has every logical reason to
believe that the remaining obscurities will be cleared up on
mechanical lines. It is quite absurd to allege that there is a
revival of Vitalism amongst biologists or physiologists just at the
time when we have discovered a new and more remarkable set of
mechanisms, the ductless glands, in the body. That discovery is the
strongest of all encouragements to Materialism.

     When we thus speak of the body as a machine or mechanism of
which life is the function, the inexpert reader is apt to be
misled. He thinks of the metallic machines with which he is
familiar. In fact, even the apologetic writers, who know hardly
more of these matters than the general public does, make the same
mistake and say very foolish things. How, they scornfully ask, can
a machine reproduce itself, or even repair itself? It is a very
superficial jibe. They are thinking of a steel or aluminum or
copper machine. By machine in biology we mean a coordinated
material structure, its various parts working in harmony, but of
such very different material from rigid metals that its action
depends essentially on the chemical changes in its elements. We
mean a chemical machine. How even this can reproduce itself we do
not yet know, but, as I said, to suppose that there is an
immaterial principle in it does not help us in the least, and all
experiment goes to show that the building of the new body is a
mechanical process.

     The Materialist has, therefore, every reason to believe that
the world of life is as material as what we call the physical or
inorganic world. No sound reason has ever been given to suppose
that life is due to an immaterial principle. The serious
outstanding question is the nature of mind. For the Materialist
mind or consciousness is a function of the brain. Even writers who
ought to know better sometimes disdainfully speak of this theory as
a bit of the discarded Materialism of the last century, or even the
eighteenth century. It is, on the contrary, the express conviction
of more distinguished men of science in our time than it was in the
last century. I have already cited Dr. Loeb and Dr. Chalmers
Mitchell.


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     My own attitude is clear from what I have said. It seems to me
that we have not, as Loeb pressed me to admit, proved that mind is
a function of the brain or explained consciousness as such; but our
progress in the explanation of mind all tends in that direction,
and I have not the least doubt but what Dr. Chalmers Mitchell
(following an older writer) says today -- that the brain produces
thought as surely as the liver produces bile -- will be amply
proved in time. Here I can give only a few general considerations
which will help the reader to think clearly on the subject.

     The chief enemy of Materialism here is philosophy.
Metaphysicians or philosophers are always anti-Materialistic, and,
as they are supposed to be our "thinkers" in the highest sense of
the word, the reader may be much impressed by their general
opposition to Materialism. The man of science, of course, does not
care two pins about their opposition. He (as Sir E. Ray Lankester
did) defines philosophy as equal to the effort of a blind man in a
dark room to hit a black cat which isn't there. As an old professor
of philosophy I am better aware of its value as a mental training,
but the fact is that it makes no discoveries. It is a collection of
antagonistic theories. I once invited a philosopher with whom I was
engaged in controversy to fill a single sheet of note-paper with
truths on which all philosophers are agreed. He declined to attempt
it. Science, on the other hand, could fill a library with
discoveries or truths on which all the experts are agreed.

     But if the philosophers are at least agreed that the mind is
a spirit, we must surely pay serious attention to them on that
point. This is not at all so obvious as it seems. What is spirit?
As I said in the first section, spirit can only be defined as
something that is not material, and therefore what the philosophers
unanimously assert is really this: that thought is not a product or
function of the material brain. Well, what do they know about the
brain? There is not a single living philosopher who has a
respectable command of our actual scientific knowledge of the
brain. They disdain science just as science disdains philosophy.

     Now if I am right in my way of putting the issue, this
physiological ignorance on the part of the philosophers means that
half the dogmatic talk about the mind as a spirit rests on a very
unsafe basis. Mind is either a function of the brain or it is the
activity of something which, though bound up with the brain, is not
material. By all the rules of logic and common sense we are bound
to assume that it is a function of the brain until proof is given
that it cannot be such. Let me emphasize the fact that the
Spiritualist is really making a dogmatic negative statement. In
fact, both sides are: and that is why I prefer Agnosticism in such
matters. The Materialist says that spirit does not exist: and at
least he has this in his favor that philosophers and theologians
have been trying for two thousand years to prove its existence and
have not succeeded. The Spiritualist makes the dogmatic statement
that the brain could not produce thought and therefore we must
introduce spirit.

     This is, of course, not the actual way in which philosophers
argue; that is to say, when they do condescend to argue on this
point, for as a rule they just assume that the mind is a spirit. We


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might take Professor Eucken as a good illustration. He teaches at
Jena, where Professor Haeckel was the most respected personality,
and consequently Eucken was compelled by Haeckel's influence to
attempt to prove, instead of assuming, that mind is a spirit. What
is the proof? It is a vague claim that the world of ideas and
emotions which we perceive through our consciousness is of a
"different order," or on a "different plane," from the world of
material realities. One set of realities is "qualitative" and the
other "quantitative." Arguments of this vague kind would not be
admitted in science. They are no better for attaining truth than
they would be in the detection of crime or the promotion of
business. We always come back to the same point. Thoughts and
emotions are of a different or a qualitative order only in the
sense that we have not yet proved them to be quantitative.

     Here we are at the heart of the real mystery or obscurity of
consciousness. We look outward upon a world of moving masses of
matter which can be weighed and measured. Then we look inward, or
reflect, and we find a world of mental acts to which no material
standard seems to apply. They are two different orders of reality,
say the philosophers. The basis of one is material reality and of
the other spiritual reality. That is really the only argument for
spirit. But it begins to weaken the moment you press it. The
Materialist suggests that thought is a function of the brain, and
here you at once get a difference. To return to Professor
Millikan's arrogant language about Materialism, when he says that
love and duty and beauty are as real as iron and wood, you see the
fallacy at once. Iron and wood are realities or substances:
thoughts and emotions are functions of a reality (whether material
or spiritual) or substance. Naturally we will find a difference.

     This is well illustrated by the developments of modern
psychology. My readers will have noticed that I have not all the
respect for that science which it at present enjoys. In taking mind
for its object it has taken the most obscure phenomenon in the
universe, and it gets out of the difficulty at many points by
giving verbal instead of real explanations. There is a very great
deal of empty verbiage in what is called psychology. It is as yet
only half scientific: the other half is metaphysical. But the
serious and substantial progress of psychology is significant. It
began as the science of mind, and mind was a spirit. Before the end
of the nineteenth century it was no longer the science of mind, but
of mental phenomena or states of consciousness. It ceased to talk
about an underlying something, a mind or spirit of which these
ideas and emotions were acts. Now it barely notices even
consciousness. It deals with a world of psychic units and has no
interest in such old questions as the nature of mind or the
spirituality or immortality of mind.

     I regard this as a triumph of Materialism. The very science
which set out to apply our modern exact methods of research to the
mind has failed to see any evidence of spirit. It refuses to
discuss the nature of the acts which it describes and classifies
and correlates. It thus leaves them as quite possibly what the
Materialist supposes: not realities, but functions of a material
reality. Sooner or later psychology will be forced, because it is
a science, to take some notice once more of those questions. We do,


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after all, want to know what mind is. We want to know what is the
relation of mental phenomena to other things in the universe. We
want to know why all these atoms of psychic life, these ideas and
emotions, are so very intimately connected that each of us is
convinced that they are acts or possessions of his own single
personality. Our consciousness tells us this as clearly as it tells
us that they exist. We want to know why each particular collection
of ideas and emotions -- mine and yours -- began twenty or fifty
years ago, and just when, as witnesses tell us, the brain began,
and made progress in clearness and efficiency just as it did.

     All these inquiries so strongly suggest that the brain is the
only basis of mental life, that some philosophers take refuge in
what is called idealism. Mind alone exists, they say: matter is
only an idea in the mind. No group of philosophers is more
supercilious about Materialism than these Idealists, but their
position is really absurd. It is humorous to find such thinkers
imagining themselves "profound" and saying that Materialists are
"superficial." Such a science as astronomy is a fairy-tale for
children, and all astronomical research is a waste of time, if the
universe exists only in the mind. History is merely another dream
on which time is wasted. Literature and art are colossal illusions.
If I cannot get beyond my own mental world, then I composed
"Hamlet" or the "Iliad" or Kant's "Critique" or the "Kreutzer
Sonata." And it is no use thinking that some modified version of
this Idealism must or may be held. The very essence of science is
precise measurement and perfectly definite description of objective
reality. Unless our study of electrons and protons in an atom is a
study of external reality in every detail it is a waste of time.

     We have, therefore, on the spiritual side only the complete
failure of psychologists to find any other basis than the brain for
the unity and connectedness of each individual's mental life, and
the complete failure of philosophers to prove that the mind is
something more than a function of the brain. On the Materialist
side we have hundreds of things which suggest that mind is only a
function of the brain. More than half a century ago Oliver Wendell
Holmes, writing as a medical man, published a most effective little
work ("Mechanism in Thought and Morals," 1871) on these lines,
showing how mind varied with the brain as faithfully as the shadow
varies with the body that casts it. This evidence could be doubled
or trebled today. Haldane says in his "Daedalus" (p. 34) that
during the war the German scientists discovered that a dose of acid
sodium phosphate enormously increased a man's vitality, and it is
now taken habitually by thousands of people. Cocaine is another
example. But more important even than these are the thyroid and
pineal glands which I mentioned in the last section. And still more
important is the fact of the evolution of mind which I discuss in
other books. From the microbe to Shakespeare there has been a quite
continuous evolution of mind. There is no sudden advance anywhere
to suggest that a "spirit" has at that point been introduced into
the universe. Evolution, like all great discoveries, is entirely on
the side of the Materialist.

     If it is said that these things only prove the dependence of
mind on brain, which everyone admits, we may again contrast the
Materialist and the Spiritualist positions. The Materialist
position is clear and free from verbiage, Mind is a function of

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brain, so this intimate correspondence is natural. But on the
Spiritualist side no one has ever been able to give even an
elementary explanation of it. All that we get are figures of
speech, and every one even of these is inept. We are told usually
that the relation of mind and brain is like that of musician and
his instrument. There is, even in the Spiritualist hypothesis, not
the slightest analogy. The musician is distinct from the instrument
and works it by physical contact. If you say that it is the mind of
the musician which works it, you simply come back to the starting
point: is mind a spiritual reality, or do you really mean that the
musician's brain plays the instrument? No one has the least idea
what a spirit is, how it can be bound up with matter, how it can
possibly move matter, why a spirit should be more capable of
thinking than a brain is, what the function of the brain really is
if it is not thought, and so on, and so on. The spirit-hypothesis
explains nothing and creates scores of problems.

     These "profound" people make me smile. They are playing with
mere words half their time. The Materialist sticks to realities.
Where the realities are still obscure he can afford to wait. All
progress is in his favor. If a logician dealt with the question in
the abstract, and summed up all the discoveries which suggest that
mind is a function of brain, be would say that the chances are a
thousand to one in favor of the Materialist. That is where I prefer
to leave the matter. Is it necessary to have any 'ism? If you think
so, it seems much safer to choose Materialism. It has triumphed in
every discovery we have made. But many will prefer, like myself, to
say just that, and leave the job of putting a definite label on the
entire universe to the scientific men of the year 3000 A.D. or even
30,000 A.D. The race will still then be in its infancy.

                     DETERMINISM AND MORALS

     A few reflections must be made on the question whether
Materialism would not lead to demoralization because it implies
Determinism or the denial of free will.

     Most of us are unmoved by these attempts to prove that this or
that will lead to demoralization. The Individualist is sure that
Socialism means ruin, and the Socialist that it is the only means
of social salvation. The Protestant despairs of the future of
society if Catholicism makes any progress, and the Catholic is
supremely confident that his faith is beneficent. And so on. You
have the same flat contradiction between the opponents and the
defenders of nearly every creed or theory. A hundred years ago
conservatives predicted ruin from democracy and every one of the
things that has actually improved the world. And against these
scores of different prophets of demoralization rises the sufficient
fact: there is no demoralization.

     We must, however, devote a few pages to this question of free
will, though most of the anxiety about it which apologists profess
is entirely insincere. And the first point is that the proper
experts on this supposed liberty of the will are our psychologists,
and it would be difficult to quote a modern psychologist who
believes in it. They have come to this conclusion, not in virtue of
any general theory of the nature of the mind such as Materialism,


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but because modern psychology analyzes mental processes more deeply
than philosophers ever did. They are men of science. They realize
that the witness to our freedom which consciousness is supposed to
give us is not at all a clear and unambiguous testimony; that the
words "free will" are found on analysis to be loose in their
meaning; and that the claim of free will means in the last resort
something which is impossible.

     What do I mean when I say that my mind assures me that I have
"free will"? Let me say first that "will" in the old sense is not
recognized in modern psychology. The mind has no such "faculties"
as the older psychologists used to describe. As I have already
said, modern psychology goes, perhaps, a little too far when it
sweeps aside the mind as well as the faculties, and recognizes only
acts. An act implies an agent. However, we need not discuss that
point here. What I mean when I say that I have free will is that I
can go to town by train, street-car, or automobile, as I choose;
that I can spend my vacation at any one of a hundred places the
names of which lie before me; that I can buy a bottle of wine or
some other illicit pleasure if I choose, and avoid it if I choose.
There is, I say, no compulsion.

     That is just the point. There is no compulsion of which you
are directly conscious, yet the moment you begin to analyze the
testimony of your own mind you see that the matter is not so
simple. You have five dollars to spare, let us say, and you reflect
that you may (1) go to a good show, (2) visit a young lady, or (3)
buy something for your wife. You are free to choose, and, when you
act, it is on your uncompelled decision. But in this you go beyond
the real witness of your consciousness. All that it tells is that
your mind hesitates between the three, and that eventually one is
accepted. Most of our actions are automatic. Even where there is a
slight hesitation -- between the street-car and the train -- the
action is plainly automatic. In your mind, possibly subconscious
mind, the motives or inducements are fairly equal, but one
prevails. And, no matter how long you hesitate, feeling a sort of
lordly dominion over your actions (just because none of the
alternatives is so definitely more attractive than the others as to
issue at once in action), the end is the same. There was a motive
for your action. It was no more "free" than when you rubbed your
knee after knocking it against a chair. The only difference is that
in the latter case there is no alternative course of action to
check your impulsive movement. But your act, even if you deliberate
for hours, has a motive. The brain-process which initiates your
action has an antecedent brain-process which is the motive or cause
of it; and this much would have to be recognized even if you
believed the mind to be a spirit.

     The strongest motive wins in a struggle. You may say that,
just to prove your freedom, you will choose the alternative which
seems to you less attractive; but you have merely thrown into the
scale a new motive. A free act in the sense in which theologians
use the word would be an uncaused act. They are not even consistent
with their own principles. They evade the very difficult question,
how spirit can act on matter, by pleading that spirit does not act
on matter, but with matter, as soul and body are substantially
united; then, when they come to free will, they want us to admit a


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series of nerve-processes (leading to the muscular movement or act)
initiated by the soul alone! It is not only inconceivable, but
false. The nerve-process which represents the victorious motive
initiates the executive nerve-processes; and the testimony of our
consciousness is quite consistent with that scientific
interpretation of what takes place.

     Equally futile is the contention that we cannot punish
criminals or children unless we grant them liberty of will. As
regards children, the age-old practice of punishment is a relic of
barbarism. I have raised four fine children and never punished one,
even with my tongue. Others tell me that there are children who
need punishment. I wonder. In some of the special schools of
America for such children marvels have been done by intelligent
treatment where years of punishment were merely making a criminal.
The whole practice is dying. Even if there are cases, which I
doubt, in which a child cannot be deterred from wrong-doing except
by punishment, to administer such punishment would not in the least
be inconsistent with Determinism, as I will show presently. But
probably there is no real need. Not so very long ago it was
generally thought that a wife must be beaten occasionally. Our
modern sentiment is that the man who lays a finger on his wife is
a beast. We are beginning to think the same about children.

     Children's acts are, in any case, automatic, and it may be
thought that the adult criminal offers a more serious problem. Not
at all. The whole tendency of modern penology is to soften the
rigor of punishment for crime, and everywhere, except where special
political conditions give rise to abnormal circumstances in
America, crime is rapidly decreasing. This problem of crime and
religion I consider in another book, and all that I need note here
is that, even if we decide that severe punishment is necessary for
the repression of crime, the matter has nothing to do with
Determinism. The punishment is no longer regarded in any
civilization as vindictive. It is deterrent -- or else it is
unjust. When all men believed that God inflicted punishment for
sin, obviously not as a deterrent, but as vindictive punishment for
"wounded majesty," society naturally dealt with its rebels in the
same way. We do so no longer. The only question with us is whether
the attaching of a certain penalty to theft or violence is not a
good means of deterring men from crime who might otherwise be
disposed to commit it.

     Of rewards we say the same thing; though here again the idea
itself conflicts with modern sentiment. In any case the reward is
meant to provoke effort. Even in the case of prizes to girls for
remaining virtuous, as there are in France, the idea is that the
prospect of a hundred dollars or so will be an additional motive in
the mental scale, counterbalancing the attractions of a year of
liberty. The mind of the pious maid is often so delicately balanced
between heaven and the embraces of a lover that a hundred dollars
turns the scale: to say nothing of the prestige of having one's
virtue broadcast through the press.

     Praise and blame must be regarded in the same light, if any
man feels that he must indulge in those moral luxuries. We are
growing out of these things, except in the exalted atmosphere of
complimentary banquets. To blame an employe has nothing to do with

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Determinism. It is sound psychological business. To blame one's
husband or wife, or even the husband or wife of a friend, is just
as obviously in the nature of a deterrent. Your expostulation
becomes an additional motive in his mental balance and may turn the
scale on the right side. All such things are, if anything, actions
taken strictly on Determinist principles.

     But I do not want the reader to imagine that all is clear as
noonday in this matter of free will. Every man of strong vitality
is conscious of what a modern psychologist has called a "power of
self-orientation." Henley's lines:

               I am the master of my fate,
               I am the captain of my soul,

or Shakespeare's "I'll take up arms against a sea of troubles,"
express something that is within our experience. It does not imply
free will, in the old sense, for that would mean an uncaused act.
What precisely it does mean, and how this seeming power of self-
determination has been evolved in an automatic world, are questions
of the psychology of the future. The last thing in the universe
which the mind will understand is itself. If the mind were a
spirit, that would be a paradox. On Materialist principles it is a
platitude. For the mind is the function of a structure which is so
enormously more complex than anything else in the universe that it
will necessarily take longer than anything else to understand. The
very obscurity of mental phenomena is a triumph of Materialism. It
is just what the Materialist expects.

     Finally a word must be said about what is called the
Materialist determination of history. In so far as this is a
Marxian economic theory -- in so far as it traces all the features
of an age or a society to its economic arrangements in the stricter
sense of that word -- it obviously cannot be discussed here. But in
the broader sense it concerns us, and it is one more triumph of
Materialism.

     Modern history is a massive application of the Materialist
principle. Environment is used on every page as the clue to
historical developments. I have in other books, and especially in
"The Evolution of Civilization," etc., shown what a flood of light
the study of material surroundings has thrown on history. The last
Ice Age and the material conditions of Egypt, Babylon, and Crete,
of China, and India, explain the beginning of history in each case.
Earlier still the prehistory of man is mainly interpreted in terms
of changes in his environment and habits. I have shown the same in
regard to the rise of Athens and of Rome, the development of the
Moorish civilization in Spain, the triumph of the Teutons over the
Romans, of the Arabs over the Greeks, of the Turks over the Arabs.
Geographical position, climate, soil, minerals, rivers -- these are
the clues we follow now in interpreting the history of cities or
nations.

     Whether we can say, as is often done, that the Materialist
factor explains everything in history depends, not upon the facts,
but upon one's theory. For the convinced Materialist everything is
material, so the question is closed. For the Spiritualist mind is


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a spirit, and mind is certainly a factor in history. The ideas of
Franklin, Paine, Washington, and Jefferson, for instance, were very
important factors in the history of America. The ideas of Marx were
very important factors in the history of Russia: the ideas of
Mussolini in the history of Italy, and so on. It is plain that if
one is asked to decide whether every historical factor is
Materialistic, one must first say whether or not ideas and plans
are material realities. I think they are, but I leave the dogmatic
answer to such questions to a generation that will know ten times
as much as we do.

     It is at least clear that the modern Materialistic emphasis on
environment has been a splendid social factor. It is the last
triumph of Materialism that I have to record. Old Robert Owen
begged Europe and America a hundred years ago to see that "man's
character is made for him, and not by him"; and made by his
domestic and economic conditions. How Materialistic, said the
clergy! But the world was in a sorry mess after they had been
guiding it for fourteen hundred years on the theory that man has a
soul and free will, and you have simply to present your moral ideal
to him. We have, instead, tried the improvement of his environment
-- his home, workshop, purse, recreations, schools, baths, clothes,
etc. -- and we have done more in a hundred years' application of
this Materialist philosophy than parsons had done in a thousand
years. Yet, Sunday after Sunday, they still drone about the horrid
dangers of Materialism!



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Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
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               THE STORY OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY
                               by
                          Joseph McCabe

                              1929



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