196
PLANCHETTE.
body when it is used for the manuring of the fields; there is no
personal God, who would be as much as a gaseous, vertebrated
animal; but the universal law of causation is God. There is no
a priori knowledge. There is no knowledge without sensual im¬
pressions, and no such impressions without a material object
The human mind is no spontaneous and productive, but only a
receptive and digestive, organ.”
Of this coarse materialism, Professor Gustave Franck, of Vi¬
enna, lately said, in his inaugural address, “ Scientific criticism
has first to take in hand the principle of materialism ; and that is,
all is matter, or there is nothing hut matter. But this leading
idea is not met with in matter. Materialism is thus based on an
immaterial principle, which cannot be proved from matter, and
which thus contradicts itself. If materialism could account for
every thing else in the universe, it could not account for its own
first principle, and thus rests on the belief of a dogma or a prej¬
udice.
“ If all is matter, thought is likewise a product of matter, an
accidental conglomeration, as Vogt says, of atoms in the brain.
Each sphere of thought is, therefore, an accidental phenomenon ;
each lacks the character of logical necessity. If two men think’
the same thoughts, it must be owing to the accidental sameness
of the substance of their brains. Universal and necessary truths,
that is, truths which each and every one has, by necessity, to'
recognize, there cannot be.
“But if this is so, what right has the materialist to proclaim
his idea of the world as the only true one, and what interesl
prompts him to attack opposite views ? If he is consistent, he
cannot do any thing else than complain bitterly of fate or acci
dent, by which, in the brains of others, atoms conglomerate in av
manner so vastly different from that in his own.
“ Now what is the position of materialism when tested hÿ
mathematics? Are its propositions and axioms universal ane
necessarily true, or are they accidental ? To admit the first par]
of this question involves a denial of the very first principle o|
materialism ; and to assume the second is absurd.