Materialism infers from its principles the denial of any future to man, and not only any future, but any true value, any real existence.  We are nothing but an agglomeration of molecules, ready to separate without leaving any trace of ever having been together.  Is not this a thing to be said sadly, as the saddest thing in the world?  Why then are the apostles of matter nearly always assuming the loftiest tone, and uttering shouts of triumph?  It is that they feel themselves free, emancipated from that terror which has made the gods,

                            ... that brood of idle fear
     Fine nothings worshipped,—­why, doth not appear;
     The gods—­whom man made, and who made not man.[66]

Emancipation!  Such is the watchword of materialism.  Listen, for example, to the conclusion of Baron d’Holbach’s System of Nature:  “Break the chains,” says he, “which are binding men.  Send back those gods who are afflicting them to those imaginary regions from whence fear first drew them forth.  Inspire with courage the intelligent being; give him energy; let him dare at length to love himself, to esteem himself, to feel his own dignity; let him dare to emancipate himself, let him be happy and free.”  Strange accents these, at the close of a large philosophical treatise intended to prove that there is nothing in the universe but matter.  Whence proceeds the dignity of that fragment of matter which calls itself man?  Understand well what passes in the mind of these philosophers.  In proportion as man lowers his own origin, in the same proportion,—­if he does not wish to make himself a brute, in order to live as do the animals,—­he exalts himself in an inevitable sentiment of pride.  In vain does he give out that the material frame is everything; he feels that thought is more than the material frame; and he accords to himself the first place in the universe.  The materialist ignores the Eternal Mind in order to emancipate himself; and whatever he may say, his real deity is not the atom, but himself.  The encyclopedists, sons of an age which yielded at once to noble influences and to guilty seductions, united the worship of progress to a degrading philosophy.  Consider with what a feeling of pride they lowered man, and you will understand why eternal nature gave place to sacred humanity.  When France had fallen into the delirium of irreligion, it was not a little dust in an earthen vase which was offered for public adoration, but they led in procession through the streets of Paris a woman who was called the goddess Reason.

So it was that materialism ended in the adoration of man.  Let us endeavor to understand how the adoration of man turns again to materialism.  The mind endowed with intelligence and will is more elevated in the scale of being than inert bodies.  This is for us an evident truth.  Could one demonstrate it by reasoning?  I do not know; but in contesting it, we should contradict the plainest evidence.