Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/344

 the fangs of cerebralistic materialism are drawn;” . . . “the fatal consequence is not coercive, the conclusion which materialism draws being due solely to its one-sided way of taking the word ‘function.’” He points out that it assumes the functional relation of brain to consciousness to be always and solely productive, ignoring the fact that it may just as well be either (1) permissive, i.e. releasing, or (2) transmissive. “My words,” he closes by saying, “ought consequently to exert a releasing function on your hopes. You may believe henceforward, whether you care to profit by the permission or not.”

Upon this merely permissive conclusion of his argument, this bare opening of room for belief, — to take advantage of which we must summon the courage to risk the belief, and so leave it after all a matter of sheer resolution, — I repeat I can hardly doubt that many of you wondered if this were all that philosophic thought can do for our heart’s desire after light and foothold beyond the grave. You must have wondered if that region of “super-solar blaze” must always remain this blank Perhaps; if that “white radiance of eternity” always must be visible to the poet’s eye alone; or if it might not, rather, by some better philosophic fortune be revealed to clear insight as a reality undeniable, and so our belief in it become the act of intelligence, solid and sup-