Some Difficulties of Modern Materialism [pp. 344-372]

THRE PRIvCE 7TO0. RE VIEW.
then, if the elements should ever rise to vital and mental mani festations, that these also would be fixed expressions of what
the elements are; not something acquired and adventitious, but
something inherent and essential. Indeed from this standpoint
the notions of heredity and experience are grotesquely untena ble. The elements have laws, not habits; and they neither have
nor inherit experiences. Their combinations, also, must be of
the same sort; and if it be absurd to speak of the complex
molecule as forming habits and learning new forms of ac tion, it is equally absurd to speak of organic molecules as
so doing; for organic molecules are simply complex molecules,
and the organism is only a group of complex molecules. It is,
then, a grave inconsistency when materialism is joined to em piricism, according to which mental manifestation has no fixed
and necessary laws, but is a pure product of experience. According to materialism, there is no need of experience for any
depth of insight or even for any amount of memory. All that
is needed in order to have a perfect insight into both present
and past is that the appropriate organism be produced. Materialism, then, is compatible only with a high form of apriorism;
and the laws of mind have as good right to be viewed as essential and inviolable as the laws of gravity and chemical affinity.
Indeed materialists and evolutionists in general show a very imperfect appreciation of causation in their theories of life and
mind. Beginning with fixed elements, the outcome must be
fixed; and the fancy that mind may waver and be this or that
contradicts the notion of law which is at the bottom of the
system. The laws of mind must be fixed in the nature of
matter. This is a somewhat bizarre and unexpected result, but
it must be admitted. It is needless to point out that psychological empiricism when logical makes materialism as a reasoned
system impossible. The union of the two must be regarded
as a kind of philosophical adultery. And so we come around to
our previous conclusion, that the materialistic theory of knowledge is that of an opaque harmony between the organism and
the surrounding world.
We have already pointed out that natural selection, as a
principle of belief, does not escape the admission of an uncaused
harmony between the body and its environment; we have next
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