Page:Tyranny of Shams (1916).djvu/305

 important and productive of good than the material, and that therefore materialism is the most appalling blight that can fall on a nation. These prophets of evil are, as I have previously observed, not strong in history. They do not explain how Confucianism (which Sir Edwin Arnold, accurately enough, calls materialism) proved so great an inspiration in China and Japan: how the Stoics (who refused utterly to believe in spirit) wrought so much good and inspired so fine a character at Rome: or how this materialistic age of ours is so idealistic. They know only that we must at all costs cultivate the spiritual—read spiritual writers, respect spiritual persons, encourage spiritual clergymen and artists and actors—and loathe materialism from the bottom of our hearts. And it is therefore quite natural to suppose that all that is precious in life and progress depends on the belief in the existence of “spirits.”

In point of fact, we have here entangled ourselves in an extraordinary confusion. The cultivation of intelligence, fine sentiment, and straight character has nothing whatever to do with the question whether the mind of man is or is not divisible into parts, or has or has not “inertia”: which are the only philosophic distinctions between matter and spirit that I have discovered. The tradition of the spirituality of the mind is responsible for this confusion. If the mind is a spirit, then spirit is assuredly the source of the finest things in life, and is far superior to matter. But that is just the