Page:Mary Whiton Calkins - The Ancient Landmarks - A Comment on Spiritualistic Materialism (The Journal of Philosophy, 1922-08-31).pdf/3

Rh in controlling the motions of other atoms, which exercise their powers in many places at once.”

The theory thus briefly summarized is immensely significant in its stress on the substantiality and individuality of mind and in its call upon “a spiritualistic psychology” for a statement of the “precise laws” of mind. As enlightened materialism the doctrine may, to be sure, be challenged at several points. One may, for example, call attention to Sheldon’s unargued identification of the “physical” with the material and to his parallel claim of “the evidence of sense observation” for materialism. Or again, one may point out that so long as Sheldon “deliberately” neglects to take into account personalistic philosophy he can hardly argue that his ”enlightened materialism, freed from the negations … men have read into it, forms the warrant of subtantiality to the self.” For substantiality, in the sense of persistence through change, is precisely one of the characters of the personalist’s self. But the main purpose of the present paper is neither to emphasize the significance of Sheldon’s rediscovery of mind nor to criticize his doctrine of its extendedness but simply to challenge his right to the term “materialism” as descriptive of his doctrine. For Sheldon’s conception of “the absolute reality of both matter and mind” is, as he himself sometimes recognizes, a form of dualism. And certainly a philosophy which begins by arguing the existence of unique spiritual being is not materialism in the sense which the usage of centuries has given to the word; a doctrine which “forms the only warrant of substantiality to the self” is neither “positive” nor “enlightened”. Anybody with a vestige of respect for “ancient landmarks” in language will protest to the end against this “perversion of the use of speech.”

(ii) Professor Sheldon, as has appeared, seeks to materialize the mind. The aim of Professor Loewenberg is, on the contrary, to spiritualize matter. This feat he readily accomplishes by the simple device, on which his whole argument turns, of identifying the “spiritual” with the “valued,” or “significant.” Thus he refers to “meaning, significance, dignity, rationality—in short,