affirm the existence of absolute matter or of absolute mind. The
real truth of the philosophy of science lies in a separation between
metaphysical theory and actual pursuits. In ultimate philosophical
theory it is impossible to rest content with a plain natural
conception of the universe. When any conception of matter, or of its
affections, is pushed as far as analysis can take us, what we know
resolves itself into affections of mind, into what without
metaphysical finesse may be called ideas. But this empirical idealism
must be taken positively as being merely the limits of our knowledge,
and it must carry with it neither an undue exaltation of mind nor an
undue depreciation of matter.

"The Platonic philosophy is probably the grandest example of the
unscientific use of the imagination extant; and it would be hard
to estimate the amount of detriment to clear thinking effected,
directly and indirectly, by the theory of ideas, on the one hand,
and by the unfortunate doctrine of the baseness of matter, on the
other."

Materialism was dismissed by Huxley as being an inadequate
philosophical explanation of the universe, and as being based on a
logical delusion. There remains, however, a practical application of
the word in which the conceptions it involves are almost an inevitable
part of science, and which was strenuously urged by Huxley. In the
earlier days of the world and of science almost all the phenomena of
nature were regarded as random or wilful displays of living
intelligence. The earth itself and the sun, the moon, and the stars
were endowed with life; legions of unseen intelligences ruled the
operations of nature, and although these might be bribed or
threatened, pleased or made angry, their actions were regarded as
beyond prediction or control. The procession of the seasons, the
routine of day and night, the placid appeasement of the rains, the
devastating roar of storms, the shining of the rainbow, the bubbling
of springs, the terrors of famine and pestilence; all these--the
varying environment which makes or mars human life--were regarded as
inevitable and capricious. The whole progress of physical science has
been attended with a gradual elimination of these supernatural
agencies and with a continual replacement of them by conceptions of
physical sequence.

"In singular contrast with natural knowledge, the acquaintance of
mankind with the supernatural appears the