Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/502

 But he does claim that the impressions which we call mental are produced by those we call material, namely, cerebral action. So far he is a materialist, and the undoubted tendency of his philosophy is materialistic—he makes matter the basis even of mental action. He is not like Hume a skeptic, for he does not affirm that there are no things: all that he says is, that if they exist we can not know them; or, rather, that things known to us are merely impressions in the shape of sensations—of sensations remembered and correlated. He is not an atheist, not he; he only says that we have no proof of the existence of God. He is simply an honest agnostic—not believing in mind, or in matter, or in God. What is the tendency of such a system?

1. It makes us feel that we are in a world of illusions. I say illusions, and not deceptions; for, as Nature does not profess or promise anything, it can not be charged with intentional deception. But then we may be deceiving ourselves or deceiving others; and agnostics show that we are doing so. I maintain that it strips us of many of our natural beliefs—beliefs which men have entertained in all ages and countries. The great body of mankind believe that they themselves, and the objects they have to deal with, are more than impressions, and that they are realities in a real world; that there is matter that is solid, that there is mind that thinks and feels, that we all possess a soul, and that our neighbors also have souls. I am prepared to show that these convictions are valid; that we have the same evidence of a self thinking, and of body resisting our activity, as we have of the existence of impressions. But suppose these convictions removed, and how do we feel, and what have we left us?

Will we be apt to set a higher value on life when we know it to be a mere bundle of impressions with unsubstantial ideas growing out of them? Will we take a deeper interest in our neighbors when we have come to believe (theoretically, for to believe this practically is impossible) that they too are a mere congeries of appearances? Will we be disposed to do more for the world when we regard it as a set and series of phantasmagoria bound by rigid uniformities of likeness, coexistence, and succession? Will we be more likely to feel that life is worth living for, and that it is our duty to work for its good, when we contemplate it as in fact a mere series of images which do not reflect any reality? Will not one hindrance to self-indulgence be removed when we are made to acknowledge that sensations and pleasures are realities, and that there are no others? Will not one hindrance to self-murder, which we may be tempted to commit when in trouble, be removed when we are sure that we are merely stopping a series of sensations? Will the regret of the learned murderer be deepened when he is told that he has merely laid an arrest on a few pulsations? Will the seducer be more likely to be kept from gratifying his lust when the highest philosophy teaches him that the soul of his victim is a mere collection of nerves? Is the youth who has run in debt less