WG-01-1. THE PASSING OF MATERIALISM

1. THE PASSING OF MATERIALISM

THROUGH all generations philosophy has concerned itself with the questions: How did man come to be what he is? and, How did social conditions come to be what they are? These are not really two questions, but one; since the condition of “the world” finds its immediate explanation in human nature. For thousands of years men have been observing minutely social conditions as they exist from time to time, and the changes from one set of conditions to another. A great mass of facts has been col­lected and many “laws of nature” have been ascertained or inferred; and upon all this fund of information philosophical minds have pondered, seeking the explanation of man and his world. The latest and most ambitious attempt at the unification of human knowledge is that made by Mr. Herbert Spencer. In the Spencerian view of the universe all changes and developments are, and always have been, controlled by a principle or law of Evolution. According to this supposed law, all developments proceed from the relatively simple and homogeneous to the relatively complex and heterogeneous. Entrusting ourselves to the guidance of this theory we are led backward in time to a condition. of extreme simplicity, to a period wherein “eternal and indestructible matter" subsisted in a perfectly simple and undifferentiated condition, and wherein “eternal and indestruc­tible” force had no manifestation, and no property but the impulse to evolve. This philosophy gives no account of the origin of matter and force, nor does it assume to suggest how the principle of Evolution came into operation. It does not attempt to explain how or by what means the primal impulse to evolve was imparted to matter in its (supposed) primal condition of absolute simplicity and, homogeneity. On the contrary, the Spencerian philosophy places the origin of matter, energy, and the primal evolution­ary impulse in the region of the “unknowable.” It admits the existence of a “First Cause,” because the latter is necessary in order to complete the explanation. This “First Cause” is needed for the purpose of starting the universe, and of impressing upon it the primal evolutionary impulse; but thereafter it is dismissed, being functus officio, and no longer required for the explanation of phenomena. Lest there should be, on the part of students of this modern philosophy, any dis­position to inquire further regarding the “First Cause,” that too is placed in the category of the “unknowable.”

Spencerian philosophy thus sets itself forth as a finality. Except as to details, it speaks the last words of man’s wisdom, since it explains how everything, animate and inanimate, came to be what it is in consequence of gradual changes and of new and ever more complex—but purely spon­taneous and fortuitous—groupings of the original atoms; and what it does not purport to explain it puts into the impenetrable region of the “unknowable.”

It has been very properly objected that this philosophy is exceedingly unphilosophical in as­serting that God (a name which many prefer to “First Cause”) has no power to make Himself known to man, and that hence the use of the term “unknowable” is wholly unwarranted. The use of this word is simply a presumptuous attempt to erect a barrier against all inquiry into what it most concerns man to know; and from this circumstance alone the truly wise may clearly perceive the origin and purpose of Spencerian philosophy. When once pointed out, it is obvious to the most unphilosophical mind that God would not be God if He had not the power to reveal to man so much of Himself, and of His purposes in creation, as the mind of man is capable of comprehending.

We can agree with the conclusions of Herbert Spencer and his school to this extent, that man cannot know anything of his own origin, of human nature with its strange contradictions, and of the existing world-system or organization, unless it be directly revealed by the Creator.

Upon this ground "thinkers” of all schools can stand; and their first division must be upon the question whether or not God has communicated with man and given to him a revelation: that is, upon the question—Is the Bible the Word of God?