Mr. Spencer believes this as much as anyone; so why should he
argue with us as if we were making silly aesthetic objections to the
'grossness' of 'matter and motion,' the principles of his
philosophy, when what really dismays us is the disconsolateness of
its ulterior practical results?
No the true objection to materialism is not positive but negative.
It would be farcical at this day to make complaint of it for what it
IS for 'grossness.' Grossness is what grossness DOES--we now know
THAT. We make complaint of it, on the contrary, for what it is NOT--
not a permanent warrant for our more ideal interests, not a
fulfiller of our remotest hopes.
The notion of God, on the other hand, however inferior it may be in
clearness to those mathematical notions so current in mechanical
philosophy, has at least this practical superiority over them, that
it guarantees an ideal order that shall be permanently preserved. A
world with a God in it to say the last word, may indeed burn up or
freeze, but we then think of him as still mindful of the old ideals
and sure to bring them elsewhere to fruition; so that, where he is,
tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and
dissolution not the absolutely final things.
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