Sixth Meditation. Materialism.

Materialistic Pantheism is more consistent and more intelligible. I must at once restore to it its genuine name; it has no right to that of Pantheism: it sees God neither in the universe nor in man; the eternal world and ephemeral individuals are, in its eyes, only combinations and different forms of matter. It is Materialism in its principle, and Atheism in its consequences.

Two things strike me in the actual state of men's minds; the progress that Materialism is making, and its constant timidity in that very progress.

The progress of Materialism is evident; progress in the learned world and in the unlearned world, in the name of the scientific studies and of popular tendencies. A contemporary spiritualistic philosopher, as distinguished by intellectual probity as by the independence and the moderation of his opinions, of whom the Duke de Broglie, on learning his death, exclaimed, "We have lost a sage"—M. Damiron I mean—published eight years ago his "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la philosophie au 18 siècle;" he had read it in successive parts to the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. He said in his preface, "Men are disposed a second time to have Sensualism; they insist upon something that they may oppose to and substitute for pure and simple Spiritualism: be it so; but then let them at least well understand what it is that they are asking for. It is not merely Locke, the moderate chief of the school, nor is it d'Alembert, nor Saint-Lambert, nor even Helvetius; these keep themselves relatively within bounds: it is Diderot who has so little moderation, it is d'Holbach, it is Naigeon, it is Lalande, and de la Mettrie; it is a whole order of minds, not very eminent, but very decided and very consistent and logical in their materialism; materialists in all and for all, from the soul up to God—not forgetting, be it remembered, liberty, duty, a future life, etc. … These men, with their heads in the air and their masks in their hand, with a confidence in themselves and a faith almost confounding itself with religion, profess openly as truth, fatalism, egotism, and atheism. This is what men want, and what, if they wish to be logical, men must want, when, closely or remotely, they adhere to a philosophy that reduces everything to sensation, and that which is the object of sensation. Let there then be no illusion upon this subject; all the principles of morals and of religion are at stake. Sensualism is what it is, and can be nothing else. It was made a complete system in the eighteenth century; nothing remains in it that can be either made or remade; and if men recur to it in our days, the mechanism and the form may be altered—for these are variable—but not the essential substance, for that is not so. There are not two manners of being consequent any more in this system than in any other; however the attempt may be made, men can never by any reproduction render it what it is not, and what its nature prevents it from ever being; so we must take it or we must leave it alone; we cannot change its principles." [Footnote 71]

What M. Damiron eight years ago felt would occur, has been accomplished rapidly. Sensualism, in its true nature as Materialism, has resumed its activity and returned to the stage; now tacitly admitted by sober, studious men, now loudly professed and loudly proclaimed by the "enfants terribles" of the school; professed and proclaimed not only with all its principles, but with all its consequences.

A profound sentiment of hesitation and embarrassment clings, nevertheless, to the doctrine of Materialism. The most distinguished of its adepts struggle to give explanations that look like disavowals, and many repudiate the charge of being Materialists as if it were an insult. "I have never," says M. de Remusat, "observed without astonishment the testy sensibility of philosophers upon this point. Who is there that has not witnessed the indignation manifested by the followers of the philosophy of sensation when they hear retraced to them the positive consequences of this doctrine? It seems just as if their rightful claims were being disavowed, or as if they were being denounced; as if the Inquisition were still at hand, with its tortures and its auto-da-fès; or as if their refuters were sending them to martyrdom. A general timidity reigns throughout their school; they seem to think freedom of opinions never sufficiently assured, and society never tolerant enough, for their philosophy to declare and avow itself for such as it is. Whether from shame or from fear, Materialism asks to be tenderly handled, suspects that every one who defines her has the designs of a persecutor, makes protestations of her good intentions, and is alarmed at her very faith. She defends herself from the imputation of believing only in the senses, even while making sensation the one universal fact. It might be said that she blushes at matter just as persons infirm of faith blush at the name of Jesus. Perhaps this may be an indirect proof of the distrust which their cause inspires in Materialists, and an involuntary avowal that the human mind belongs not to them." [Footnote 72]

Whence arise, what signify, these two contradictory facts: on the one side, the perseverance and the facility with which, in our days, Materialism reproduces and propagates itself; on the other side, the uneasiness and the timidity which it inspires in many of those even who admit it?

Materialism is the doctrine of appearances. "Specious doctrine," says M. Vacherot, "to those whose conception of things depends solely upon their ability to picture them to themselves." [Footnote 73]

It is by their material appearances that, at the outset, the external world and man himself manifest themselves to the human mind. It is only by reflection and by a process of observation within itself that it penetrates beyond mere appearances, and discovers what appearances alone would never enable it to see. To minds at once active and superficial, inquisitive, impatient to acquire science, although not very nice as to the kind, Materialism is a commodious and apparently clear solution of certain difficult and obscure questions which fasten irresistibly upon the human understanding.

Besides all this, these questions, and the different solutions of which they are susceptible, have their epochs of ardor or languor, of favor or discredit. In our days, the fruitful activity and the brilliant progress of the sciences of the material world, come in aid of the doctrine of Materialism. This progress is, however, far from being as exclusive of other progress as is often said. Although less popular than a few years ago, Spiritualism has not ceased to be an active and influential doctrine in the elevated region of philosophy, and the Christian awakening persists and develops itself energetically in the face of the adversaries of Christianity. The times in which we live are entitled to more justice than men accord to them; intellectual labors are now very extensive and very varied; the most different tendencies coexist, and pursue their independent career. Even in this, Materialism is again the doctrine of appearances; it is neither so strong nor so near its triumph as it has the air of being.

Nothing proves this better than the hesitation and persistent embarrassment of the most distinguished among its adherents. The circumstance noticed by M. de Remusat twenty-five years ago, is recurring at the present day as plainly as ever. Sometimes we find disavowals of the consequences of the principle of Materialism, and attempts of all kinds to escape from those consequences; sometimes we find efforts made to disguise the principle itself under purer colors. A general and enduring instinct in man persists in protesting against the appearances upon which Materialism is founded. Man does not believe either himself or the universe to be exclusively matter. The distinction between matter and mind is a natural and spontaneous, a primitive and permanent, belief of the human race.

And is this, then, merely an instinct and an aspiration, a proud pretension of human nature? Is it not, on the contrary, the innate sentiment, the intimate knowledge of that essential fact in humanity of which observation recognizes and evidences the existence?

The fact to which I allude is the following: As soon as a consciousness of life is awakened in man—as soon as he feels and perceives what is taking place within him—he has a perception of himself as of a real, personal, and distinct being. He gives voice to this feeling and this perception as soon as he uses the word "I," and he does so before he has any clear knowledge in detail of the being whose existence he so recognizes and affirms.

When, in the natural development of life, man thus makes himself as a real and personal being, the object of his own observation, he recognizes in himself as such real and personal being certain facts in their nature essentially different. On the one side, he recognizes a body inherent in his being, which forms part of his being, and through which he communicates with the external world, either by the impressions which he receives from that world, or by the modes in which he acts upon that world. On the other side, whether he regard himself as, so to say, the theater of action, or as the very actor, he recognizes himself to be a single being, a being permanent and abiding, ever the same in the midst of the variety of his personal impressions or of his actions upon the world beyond him; and this, too, in spite of the complications and incessant transformations of his body, the organ and the medium of those impressions and actions.

Thus it is that in man's consciousness there is a manifestation and proof at once of the unity and of the complex nature of the human being; that is, in accordance with the spontaneous language of mankind, at once of the distinction and of the union of the soul and of the body. This is the primitive and essential fact of man in his actual life.

In proportion as the human being develops himself, as he extends the circle of his observations upon the world and upon himself, special facts confirm the general truth of which I have just given a summary, and prove the essential distinction of the soul and the body by the essential diversity of the properties of each. Thus the body, in its organization and in its life, is subject to fixed and pre-established laws, over which man's will has no control or power; whereas the soul is essentially free, and capable of determining itself and of acting from motives foreign to the laws which govern the body. Fatality is the condition of the human being in corporeal existence; liberty is his privilege in his moral life. I say in his moral life, and the expression reveals between the soul and the body another essential and ineffaceable difference. The body is strange to every idea of morality, abandoned to the exigencies of its necessities and its appetites; it has no aspiration, no tendency but to satisfy them. The soul has needs and desires of quite a different kind, and they are often contrary to those of the body; and however often the soul may yield to the tendencies of the body, not seldom also does it withstand and surmount them; and this both in persons of obscure condition, and in those who stand in the public gaze of men. When the body is dominant in man, man tends toward Materialism; when he listens to the aspirations of soul it is, on the contrary, to Spiritualism that his nature rises. The complexity of his nature manifests itself in the development of his life as in the first instinct of his consciousness; at whatever epoch he is the subject either of his own or of our observation he cannot be called exclusively body, matter, without facts giving his assertion at each step the flattest contradiction.

Whence comes this essential and primordial fact—the fact of the complexity and yet unity of the human being? How is this union of soul and body accomplished? their mutual influences exercised, how? Here, according to religion, is the mystery; here, for philosophy, lies the problem.

Materialism is but an hypothesis adopted for the explanation of this great fact, and the hypothesis consists not in the solution of the problem, but in its suppression by the denial of the fact itself. What need, they say, to seek to explain how the union of soul and body is accomplished? Neither this complexity of the human being nor his unity in that complexity is a reality. Man is only a product and an ephemeral form of matter!

I shall not refuse myself the pleasure of refuting this hypothesis by the mouth of a contemporary philosopher, whom I shall soon myself have to combat. "Nothing," says M. Vacherot, "proves that the hypothesis of Materialism is true; on the contrary, positive facts evidence its falsity. … If the soul be only the result of the play of the organs, how is it that the soul is able to resist the impressions and the appetites of the body, to direct, concentrate, and govern its faculties? If the will be but the instinct in a different form, how explain its empire over the instinct? This fact is an irresistible argument; it is the rock upon which Materialism has always wrecked itself, and upon which it will continue to do so. … The wisdom of the ancients pronounced its decree more than two thousand years ago. 'Do we not see,' says Socrates, according to Plato, 'that the soul governs all the elements of which it is pretended that it is composed? that the soul resists them throughout the whole course of life, and subdues them in every way, repressing some harshly and painfully, as where the gymnastic or the medical method is resorted to; repressing others more gently, rebuking these, warning those, speaking to desires, to anger, to fear, as to things of a nature alien to its own? So Homer, in the "Odyssey," represents Ulysses as

"Smiting his breast, and chiding thus his heart: Bear this, O heart, thou that hast worse endured." [Footnote 74]

"'Do you think,' adds Socrates, 'that Homer would have so expressed himself had, in his conception, the soul been a mere harmony, necessarily governed by the passions of the body? Did he not rather think that the soul ought to govern and master those passions, and that the soul is something far more divine than any harmony?'" [Footnote 75]

Materialists themselves have felt the feebleness of their hypothesis; to support it they have invented a second hypothesis. "No force without matter, no matter without force," [Footnote 76] says Dr. Buchner, at the present day one of the most resolute interpreters of the doctrine. That is to say, not being able to explain facts by matter alone, as matter is observed and conceived naturally by the human mind, they endow matter with what they term force, a principle of movement and of production.

"Matter and force are," it is now said, "inseparable; both have existed from all eternity." Thus, imperiously urged by instinct and by their observation of facts, they begin again by distinguishing and naming separately matter and force; then, all at once, they confound them, treat them as united in their essence and from all eternity, and conclude by believing that they have succeeded in giving an explanation of man and of the world!

In this, what do they more than add an abstraction to an abstraction, and an hypothesis to an hypothesis? We are here in the presence of facts that are certain and yet perplexing; in presence of an external world, which evidently has not always been such as it is, which had a beginning, which is continuing to develop itself according to certain laws, and which is tending to certain ends; in the presence, too, of man, evidently a being at once one and complex, identical and yet variable. The ancients gave names and explanations to those incontestible facts, but the names and explanations are now rejected! Still, names and explanations are needed; man must put something in the place of God, Creator, and Providence—in the place of mind, and matter, and soul, and body. It is not for the first time that man finds himself confronted by this necessity, or that he essays to satisfy it; many abstractions, many words, have been already employed for this purpose. God was replaced by nature, by substance, by cause; the human soul was transformed into vital principle; the vital principle was elevated to the dignity of soul. It seems that these words, these abstractions, have had their time and lost their credit; and so now it is force which replaces them; force is mind, force is soul, force creates, force is God. It is enough now that they incorporate force with body; the problem no longer exists; man and the universe are laid bare!

When Leibnitz, to combat the Idealism of Descartes, and the Pantheism of Spinoza, developed the idea of force, he did not foresee that that very notion would be one day made use of to reduce to nonentities God, the human soul, all real and personal being, all first and final cause; to reduce, in short, everything to a medley of mechanics and dynamics incarnate in matter!

However specious it may appear to superficial minds, or to minds prejudiced in its favor by the peculiar nature of their studies and of their habitual labors, Materialism, like Pantheism, is only an hypothesis—an hypothesis constructed by dint of mere abstractions and purely verbal assertions. These not only disregard or suppress the facts which they pretend to explain, but are in direct contradiction with facts themselves recognized and proved by psychological observation. It is, in effect, an hypothesis, (I am forced here to repeat what I before affirmed of Pantheism,) equally revolting to true science and to common sense.

The hypothesis of Materialism has but a single merit; it is more consistent than those of the other systems. But even to this merit Materialism loses its title whenever it shrinks from pushing its principles boldly to their consequences, whether philosophical or practical: that is to say, whenever it shrinks from denying man's liberty, a moral law, the necessary principles of the human mind—whenever, in short, it shrinks from proclaiming its ultimate results, which are, as M. Damiron puts them, Fatalism, Egotism, Atheism. Philosophers are right in seeking for truth and in respecting truth for itself and at every risk; but there are some consequences which are the clearest evidence of a vice in principle; and this vice, in Materialism, is the blind forgetfulness of the best proved facts and the most essential elements of human nature.