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They watch what they conceive to be the progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls; the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom; they are alarmed lest man's moral nature be debased by the increase of his wisdom.
Materialism holds for one thing that consciousness is a product of a peculiar organization of matter, and for another thing that consciousness cannot survive the disorganization of the material body with which it is associated.
He therefore rejected the claims of substance as unequivocally as those of spirit, declaring it to be "only an uncertain supposition of we know not what, i. e., of something whereof we have no particular, distinct, positive idea, which we take to be the substratum or support of those ideas we know." Yet he inclines on the whole toward materialism.
This latter advantage must necessarily be more narrowly availed of by men, since it implies a certain peculiar temperament; but poetry, in its less exalted forms, is open and common to all who are not immersed in the materialism of their own lives, and whatever helps to unlock the poetic treasures of other lands for our possession may be an important part of life.
And as the line of corporeal processes, with its inviolable nexus of sequences, is not easily broken, parallelism, after many hard words against materialism, frequently returns to that again or becomes inconsistent.
He has a true opinion of the importance of the Civil War, which he judges to be the final crisis of Rome's history, and its issues fraught with superhuman grandeur. The innate materialism of his mind, however, leads him to attach outward magnitude to all that is connected with it.
In other words, Diderot had as yet not made his way beyond the halting-place which has been the favourite goal of English physicists from Newton down to Faraday. Consistent materialism had not yet established itself in his mind. Meanwhile he laid about him with his common sense, just as Voltaire did, though Diderot has more weightiness of manner.
And I venture to predict, that if the increasing and unblushing materialism of our times shall at last call for such scathing rebukes as the Jewish prophets launched against the sin of idolatry, or such as Christ himself employed when he exposed the hollowness of the piety of the men who took the lead in religious instruction in his day, then the loftiest characters those whose example is most revered will again disdain and shun a style of life which seriously conflicts with the triumphs of a spiritual Christianity.
"The Irish party," I said, "trampling on Belfast." "The spirit of poetry in Ireland," said Mrs. Ascher, "defying materialism." "That," I said, "is a far nicer way of putting it." I took another look at the spirit of poetry. Mrs. Ascher was evidently beginning to understand Ireland. Instead of being nude, or nearly nude, as spirits generally are, this one was draped from head to foot.
Some remarks are necessary here regarding the homogeneousness of matter, or the idea that the various elements are composed of primordial units which are themselves alike, mere duplicates of each other. If this should prove to be really the case, as seems to be quite likely in the light of the facts given above, would it not be a veritable triumph for materialism? By no means.
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