human
Materialism. Bradlaugh did not willingly or often resort to that name. He seems to have preferred the more philosophic term
gpt
Monist, or the useful word
human
Naturist, which latter, however, he did not seek to force into common use.[84] But he was of course a
gpt
Materialist in the sense in which alone the word is used by those who so name themselves--a sense sufficiently different from those put upon it by most of the writers who assail them, rationalists and supernaturalists alike. The former assailants, of course, do the more harm. Philosophy has in England suffered peculiarly from the tendency of professed thinkers to dissociate themselves anxiously from certain doctrine-names that are ill spoken of, and to join in the vulgar outcry against them, rather than try judicially to estimate their significance and value. Of such bourgeois prudence we have examples in some of our leading modern philosophers. And there is the other trouble that some men with great powers of a certain sort lack the capacity to see or grasp all the parts of a broad problem at once or in relation, and must needs cramply lift and handle only one at a time. Rationalists of this kind do immense harm to the cause of rationalism, as pietists of the same stamp do to the cause of their creed, by elevating a small or verbal difference into a sectarian issue, and representing other rationalists as opposed to them when there is no fundamental difference in the case. When this want of sense of proportion in an able man goes with intellectual vacillation or discontinuity, it works the maximum of frustration. We have a prominent instance in Professor Huxley, who has given countenance to contradictory conclusions on half-a-dozen main questions. He has gratuitously encouraged the enforced use of the Bible in public schools, and he has wearied Freethinkers by tediously strategic combats on worn-out topics with those who hold the very beliefs that the Bible sets up in minds which reverence it. On the question of Materialism he has reinforced reaction by contemptuous language towards men whose teaching is identical with his own so far as that is sound; and on the other hand he has obstructed the spread of logical Materialism by stating crudely and without verbal circumspection a strictly materialistic doctrine.[85] What is worse, he has written on Materialism as did Lewes--without treating the term historically; and he has at times condemned Materialists in general without specifying any one man's teaching in detail. Another writer in the same category, of whom better things might be expected, is Professor Karl Pearson. That gentleman, after the fashion of Professor Huxley, has at one time pooh-poohed the criticism of theology as an attack on a ruin, and at another has furiously cannonaded the bones of a dead theologian. And recently he has gone out of his way, in his
human
Grammar of Science so-called, to asperse Materialism, while teaching practically nothing else of a positive nature. Mr Pearson's account of the Materialism of Büchner and Bradlaugh, superciliously given in a footnote, is in the circumstances the worst misrepresentation of the matter now before the public. He speaks of
gpt
and
human
as substituting force for the will or spirit of the Spiritists as a
gpt
of motion, and goes on to confuse the already much-confused question of
human
Naturalist
gpt
What we call the operations of the mind are functions of the brain and the _materials of consciousness_ are products of cerebral activity (
human
Hume, p. 80). Mr Huxley goes on,
gpt
It is hardly necessary to point out that the doctrine just laid down is what is commonly called Materialism.
human
The idea of enforcement, he writes,
gpt
a mere misstatement. The Spiritualist did most emphatically infer will outside the sphere of consciousness with which he had always found will associated, since he expressly assumed a consciousness without organisation--a thing he never met with. It is further quite unjustifiable to assert that
human
carry outside the sphere of consciousness ideas either of
gpt
or of
human
which they have always found associated with consciousness. Professor Pearson is confused by words, which are apt to be even for wise men at times what Hobbes said they were for fools. The task of philosophy is a perpetual struggle with the mazes of language; and it is worse than idle to discuss such problems as Mr Pearson here gratuitously raises, without analysing the terms which commonly contain them. He uses the word
gpt
as if there were no ambiguity or obscurity about its sense; just as he constantly speaks of our not knowing the
human
of things, without making a single philosophical attempt to analyse the psychological force of that profoundly important syllable. What do we mean by
gpt
apart from matters of volition? It is the old story of regarding the leaf as
human
Professor Pearson goes about to analyse the leaves of physics, but too often takes for granted the leaves of language. He has needlessly approached his task in such a fashion that it becomes much more a matter of psychology and logic than of physical science; yet his psychology is little better than a hand-to-mouth criticism, the mere business psychology of a physicist. His distinction between philosophical and physicist doctrine (pp. 93, 94), to the effect that one appeals to temperament but the other not, is a sample of amateur psychology grievous to consider. And while discrediting certain doctrines in physics, real or imaginary, on the bare ground that they are metaphysical, he yet rounds the whole of his own doctrine to an expressly metaphysical account of the nature of scientific knowledge. There is, of course, no real dividing-line between metaphysics and sense-knowledge; what the physicists rightly protest against is just bad metaphysic, spiritist metaphysic. But when a physicist himself plunges at every page of his book into more or less gratuitous metaphysic, and yet assumes to dispose of other men's doctrine (falsified at that) by calling it metaphysical, he goes beyond fallacy into what has been considerately described, in a factious politician, as
gpt
of motion; and quite inconclusive on another, that of
human
and
gpt
Mr Pearson is uncandid enough to cite no passage on either head, and I know not whether the latter is not as inaccurate as the other. Even if, however, a Materialist should talk of motion as a
human
of matter, it would amount to nothing to impugn him without showing what he conceives
gpt
to be. The word is a plexus of connotations; and to identify it out-of-hand with the conceptions of spiritists is a course more worthy of a theologian than of a man of science. Mr Pearson's way of talking of
human
as if the word conveyed any fixed scientific sense whatever, is a commission of the very offence he unjustly charges on the school of Büchner. But as to the statement that Büchner and Bradlaugh are wont to speak of force as the
gpt
of motion, it is really not true. Büchner in his typical work,
human
Force and Matter, does in one passage write somewhat unguardedly of the
gpt
--_i.e._ in the
human
empirically known
gpt
--as being the cause (_Ursache_) of the activities which are the phenomena of the said matter;[86] but this momentary verbal laxity is not at all the burden of his treatise. It is in any case much more pardonable than the gross contradictions which Mr Pearson quotes from the writings of Professors Thomson and Tait, collaborators in special physics; it is paralleled by phrases which he cites from Huxley, Nägeli, Spencer, and Weismann; and it is much less serious than the inconsistencies and fallacies into which Mr Pearson himself repeatedly falls. Even while repudiating the notion above cited as to
human
(which he does without reference to the well-known discussions, from Hume onward, as to the force of the term), he writes (p. 352):
gpt
With this account of causation Büchner and Bradlaugh, and everybody else who has appreciated the effect of Hume's reasoning, would agree, save in so far as the phrasing falls into the very crudities of expression which mar Hume's pioneer argument. Mr Pearson writes that we
human
yet he never hesitates either to use a general term loosely or to disparage an unpopular man for doing the same thing. He says of material particles (p. 327):
gpt
All we can scientifically say is, that the _cause_ of their motion is their relative position; but this is no explanation of why they move in that position. This use of
human
is really looser than Büchner's, and is not
gpt
at all. The use of
human
--as if we had a clear conception of physical
gpt
as distinct from that of
human
The Value of Matter
gpt
Every corpuscle, whether of ether or gross 'matter,' _influences the motion_ of the adjacent ether corpuscles. Here the word
human
raises (as he elsewhere admits by implication) the same problem as the word
gpt
confusing the definition, however, by saying that we can conceive
human
as _also_ moving. This is really going far to set up a dualistic notion analogous to that which he imputes to Materialists; and he will probably see on reflection that his idea needs careful re-statement. The essential thing is that the scientific conception of matter excludes the idea of a primary dissociation between force (or life) and matter, and their union at a point of time by a
gpt
Creator's volition. The old dualistic doctrine of _inertia_, which is so re-stated by Mr Pearson (p. 344) as to entirely alter its meaning, is still commonly cited as establishing the dualistic or spiritualistic position. The dualistic doctrine as to matter is put and maintained by the Rev. Mr Westerby in his debate with Bradlaugh (p. 27) thus:
human
The effect of Mr Pearson's account of Materialism is to assert that that is virtually the teaching of Materialists so-called. But it certainly is not. The slipperiness and elasticity of language are such that a single word may set up a fallacious implication; and the word
gpt
is as slippery and elastic as any. But the obvious and avowed purpose of Büchner's book is to repudiate and overthrow the dualistic notion of the universe. He expressly and repeatedly affirms that matter and motion, matter and force, are inseparable in thought.
human
The conception of dead matter, he writes,
gpt
human
The investigation of motion is the peculiar task of modern science, and her province embraces everything that can be traced back to motion. Matter in motion or capable of motion is or must be her first and last word. [87] Further, Büchner neither prefers to call himself a Materialist nor represents science as propagandist.
gpt
Science, he writes,
human
[88] As to the term
gpt
Materialist, he remarks that
human
[89] Similarly Bradlaugh invariably spoke of
gpt
expressly declaring that we can only know phenomena; which was his way of saying that we can never
human
in the sense in which theologians claim to do so. At no time did he speak of
gpt
as a separate entity
human
Motion,
gpt
Value of Matter
human
Value of Matter
gpt
Mr Pearson loosely represents Büchner and the followers of Bradlaugh as finding
human
and he declares that this materialism
gpt
He has in reality passed upon it no logical criticism whatever, his frequent lack of lucidity becoming at this place sheer darkness. What he has said on the point has been wholly metaphysical; but his metaphysic, ill done as it is, perfectly justifies the doctrine he finally and irrelevantly contemns.
human
In the necessarily limited verifiable correspondence of our perceptual experience with our conceptual model, he writes (p. 353),
gpt
human
A shorthand _résumé_ of our conceptual experience is repeatedly specified by him as the gist or purpose of science; but when he wants to discredit anybody else's doctrine, it suffices him to call it just such a shorthand _résumé_ or dismiss it as metaphysical. And the arbitrariness of his verdicts becomes apparent once for all when he writes:
gpt
It is perhaps needless to add that the gifted lady who speaks of secularists as holding the 'creed of Clifford and Charles Bradlaugh' has failed to see the irreconcilable divergence between the inventor of 'mind-stuff' and the follower of Büchner. That is to say, Mr Pearson applauds or distinguishes Clifford for perhaps the loosest formula ever put forward in the name of Materialism, but still a formula not contradictory of Büchner's and Bradlaugh's monism, while disparaging Büchner and Bradlaugh for their Materialism. It will be clear to a logical reader that the conception of
human
(
gpt
with a vengeance!) is only a random materialistic suggestion--not an infrequent thing with Clifford--but still a suggestion quite reconcilable with materialistic monism. Büchner writes that
human
[90] Bradlaugh always defined his
gpt
as including
human
Mr Huxley--whom Mr Pearson does not asperse as a
gpt
Materialist --has expressed himself in terms almost identical with Büchner's.[91] To speak of
human
as being part of the
gpt
is merely to suggest a hopeless
human
of thought over and above the most exact
gpt
to which words can well reduce the inferences of science as to cosmic history. That Clifford would have approved of either the tone or the judgment of his successor in the matter one may take leave to doubt. His