of matter. Excellent! A good way, therefore, to get as comprehensive and adequate an idea as possible of what matter is, would be to consider it in all its forms; in other words, to consider its total outcome. Among the realities of existence, nothing is more real than thought and emotion. We must, therefore, make provision for these in our conception of matter. But thought and emotion give rise to morality; and, if matter is to include everything, then must we concede to it a certain moral element. Matter, therefore, is something which not only contains ' the promise and potency ' of every kind of human excellence, but which manifests itself in the highest phenomena of human life just as distinctly as in the laws of mechanics and physics. Our conception of matter is thus made to embrace and embody all that before had been divided between mind and matter. We can no longer, therefore, view matter as something essentially limited to lower and simpler manifestations. Our conception of it is enlarged and dignified just in proportion to what we have made it absorb. It is not apparent, therefore, that any dignity or value which before bad attached to man's mental and moral life is in any way impaired by your representation of it as a function of matter. You have simply by your definition raised matter to a level with the highest phenomena of the universe, and stamped it with the character of equivalence with those phenomena. We may not accept your metaphysics, but we do not think they touch the essential dignity of those parts of human life which, perhaps, it was your intention to degrade in our estimation."
The trouble with "materialists" of a certain stamp lies precisely hero: they think that by proclaiming the universality of matter they can bring everything down to the level of the lowest, i. e., the simplest, phenomena that matter displays; that they can dethrone love, rob honor of its luster, and virtue of its bloom. They say: Everything is matter, and matter should be interpreted in its lowest terms—in terms, say, of mechanics. But, if any partial interpretation is to be adopted, why interpret matter in its lowest rather than in its highest terms? As well ignore the laws of mechanics and physics and chemistry as the laws of mind, the laws of morality, the laws of society. "Materialism," in the sense indicated, is simply a willful tearing down of what nature has set up. In the realm of Nature, including the life of man, we discover an ascending series of laws and relations. The simplest and most universal relations are those of space and number. Above these, in complexity and speciality, are those of physics; above these, again, those of chemistry. And so we pass on to biology, psychology, and sociology. It would be the merest folly to take one's stand, say, on the laws of mathematics or mechanics, and to refuse to recognize any higher speciality or complexity in phenomena than these will account for. It would be folly for the chemist to refuse to hear of a science of physiology, simply because the problems and methods of physiology transcended those of his own science. It would be folly of the same kind for the physiologist to insist that his methods were adequate to the solution of all questions in psychology and ethics; or, on the other hand, to deny the validity of the methods employed in the latter sciences because they were not identical with those with which he was most familiar. We can conceive that, at the moment of the first formation of every higher science, there might be those who, in the supposed interest of established methods and canons, would call in question the phenomena upon which the new science was being constructed, or deny their special character. This would be "materialism" according to the conception of it here put forward—i. e., an insist-
