One may
deny matter in that sense, as strongly as Berkeley did, one may be a
phenomenalist like Huxley, and yet one may still be a materialist in
the wider sense, of explaining higher phenomena by lower ones, and
leaving the destinies of the world at the mercy of its blinder parts
and forces. It is in this wider sense of the word that materialism
is opposed to spiritualism or theism. The laws of physical nature
are what run things, materialism says. The highest productions of
human genius might be ciphered by one who had complete acquaintance
with the facts, out of their physiological conditions, regardless
whether nature be there only for our minds, as idealists contend, or
not. Our minds in any case would have to record the kind of nature
it is, and write it down as operating through blind laws of physics.
This is the complexion of present day materialism, which may better
be called naturalism. Over against it stands 'theism,' or what in a
wide sense may be termed 'spiritualism.' Spiritualism says that mind
not only witnesses and records things, but also runs and operates
them: the world being thus guided, not by its lower, but by its
higher element.
Treated as it often is, this question becomes little more than a
conflict between aesthetic preferences.
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