Matter is gross, coarse,
crass, muddy; spirit is pure, elevated, noble; and since it is more
consonant with the dignity of the universe to give the primacy in it
to what appears superior, spirit must be affirmed as the ruling
principle. To treat abstract principles as finalities, before which
our intellects may come to rest in a state of admiring
contemplation, is the great rationalist failing. Spiritualism, as
often held, may be simply a state of admiration for one kind, and of
dislike for another kind, of abstraction. I remember a worthy
spiritualist professor who always referred to materialism as the
'mud-philosophy,' and deemed it thereby refuted.
To such spiritualism as this there is an easy answer, and Mr.
Spencer makes it effectively. In some well-written pages at the end
of the first volume of his Psychology he shows us that a 'matter' so
infinitely subtile, and performing motions as inconceivably quick
and fine as those which modern science postulates in her
explanations, has no trace of grossness left. He shows that the
conception of spirit, as we mortals hitherto have framed it, is
itself too gross to cover the exquisite tenuity of nature's facts.
Both terms, he says, are but symbols, pointing to that one
unknowable reality in which their oppositions cease.
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