Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/577

Rh first is only an image of substance, the last an image of action; but substance and action both are only effects of intelligent force, that is, of activity operating in view of a result. That activity, however, presents infinitely varied degrees of condensation, and we may say, with Maudsley: "One equivalent of chemical force corresponds to several equivalents of lower force; and one equivalent of vital force to several equivalents of chemical force." It is thus that modern science unties the gordian knot of the composition of matter.

A first exclusively analytical view of the world has led us to a first undeniable certainty, the existence of a principle of energy and motion. A second view of the universe, exclusively synthetic, leads us, as we have seen, to another certainty, which is the existence of a principle of differentiation and harmony. This principle is what is called spirit. Thus spirit is not substance, but it is the law of substance; it is not force, but it is the revealer of force. It is not life, but it makes life exist. It is not thought, but it is the consciousness of thought. A distinguished English savant, Carpenter, has said lately, with decisive clearness, "Spirit is the sole and single source of power." In a word, it is not reality, yet in it and by it realities are denned and differentiated, and consequently exist. Instead of saying that spirit is a property of matter, we should say that matter is a property of spirit. Of all the properties of matter, in fact, there is not one, no, not a single one, which is not bestowed on it by spirit. The true explanation, the only philosophy of Nature, is thus a kind of spiritualistic dynamism, very different from materialism, or from the mechanism of certain contemporary schools.

Materialism is false and imperfect, because it stops short at atoms, in which it localizes those properties for which atoms supply no cause, and because it neglects force and spirit, which are the only means we have, constituted as our souls are, of conceiving the activity and the appearings of beings. It is false and imperfect, because it stops half-way, and treats compound and resolvable factors as simple and irreducible ones; and because it professes to represent the world by shows, without attempting to explain the production of those shows. In a word, it sees the cause of diversity where it is not, and fails to see it where it does exist. The source of differentiations cannot be in energy itself; it must be in a principle apart from that energy, in a superior will and consciousness, of which we have doubtless only a dim and faulty idea, but as to which we can yet affirm that they have some analogy with the inner light which fills us, and which we shed forth from us, and which teaches us, by its mysterious contact with the outer world, the infinite order of the universe.

The danger from materialism is not, as we usually incline to think, corruption of morals by degradation of the soul. Too much