This need of an eternal
moral order is one of the deepest needs of our breast. And those
poets, like Dante and Wordsworth, who live on the conviction of such
an order, owe to that fact the extraordinary tonic and consoling
power of their verse. Here then, in these different emotional and
practical appeals, in these adjustments of our concrete attitudes of
hope and expectation, and all the delicate consequences which their
differences entail, lie the real meanings of materialism and
spiritualism--not in hair-splitting abstractions about matter's
inner essence, or about the metaphysical attributes of God.
Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal,
and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; spiritualism means the
affirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope.
Surely here is an issue genuine enough, for anyone who feels it;
and, as long as men are men, it will yield matter for a serious
philosophic debate.
But possibly some of you may still rally to their defence. Even
whilst admitting that spiritualism and materialism make different
prophecies of the world's future, you may yourselves pooh-pooh the
difference as something so infinitely remote as to mean nothing for
a sane mind.
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