“If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No.  Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.” [6]

Permit me to enforce this most wise advice.  Why trouble ourselves about matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and can know nothing?  We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it.  To do this effectually it is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs:  the first, that the order of Nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition[7] counts for something as a condition of the course of events.

Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally, as often as we like to try.  Each, therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon which any belief can rest, and forms one of our highest truths.  If we find that the ascertainment of the order of nature is facilitated by using one terminology, or one set of symbols, rather than another, it is our clear duty to use the former; and no harm can accrue, so long as we bear in mind, that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols.

In itself it is of little moment whether we express the phaenomena of matter in terms of spirit; or the phaenomena of spirit in terms of matter:  matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a property of matter—­each statement has a certain relative truth.  But with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic terminology is in every way to be preferred.  For it connects thought with the other phaenomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature of those physical conditions, or concomitants of thought, which are more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help us to exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought, as we already possess in respect of the material world; whereas, the alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas.

Thus there can be little doubt, that the further science advances, the more extensively and consistently will all the phaenomena of Nature be represented by materialistic formulae and symbols.

But the man of science, who, forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these formulae and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with the mathematician, who should mistake the x’s and y’s with which he works his problems, for real entities—­and with this further disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty of a life.