"ethereal organism" and the fact of apparitions. But it had another resource, the philosophical one.

Greek philosophic thought had never made earnest with the doctrine of inertia. Its monistic tendencies would not permit it to regard all matter as inert. It regarded some matter as self-active. This it called living matter, and in the very distinction between "living" and non-living matter it implied inertia, but limited it to a portion of the cosmos. Of such a thing as the absolute universality of inertia as a property of matter it did not dream. If it admitted the existence of the divine this was in matter, and thus it only followed the traditions of Animism, the primitive conception of Spiritualism. It did not put the divine outside of the cosmos. The dualism and transcendentalism of Christianity had not yet dawned. Hence it did not require to make all matter inert, if one form of it was capable of self-activity. In the person of Socrates, Plato and Anaxagoras, and to some extent that of Aristotle and the Stoics, it recognized a divine agent as creating the cosmic order. But it did not believe that matter was created. This it regarded as eternal and indestructible, uncreated and imperishable.

When Christianity came to the question it had two courses before it. (1) It might accept the eternity of matter and adopt the ideas of the men named and maintain a divine order in the world, whether you placed this divine outside of matter, transcendental to it, or in it, immanent in matter. It might conceive God as simply co-eternal with matter and directing its changes and cosmic order. (2) It decided to take a more direct course and to cut the Gordian knot more effectively. It affirmed the universality of inertia and the phenomenal or created nature of matter. The atoms, or all material substances, were supposed to be created, as well as the cosmic order. With the supposition that matter was essentially inert and

created, phenomenal and transient, it had to go outside of matter altogether for its creative agency. This it made God and endowed him with self-activity as opposed to the inertia of matter. It was forced by the logic of the situation to regard the divine as spirit and not as matter. Matter was not self-existent, but dependent, and with spirit as thus at the background of all things. There would be no difficulty in protecting the possibility of survival on such a basis as this. It might not prove it to be a fact, but with spirit as the absolute or background of the cosmos it would be natural to think it might respect its own creations, especially if it had implanted in them some measure of hope and moral law.

This philosophy was based upon a sort of dualism. I say "sort of dualism" because it was not so radical as Manichæanism which made two eternal principles in nature. Christianity conceded the existence of matter, but it refused to make it eternal, as did Greek thought. It was a dependent existence that matter had. The eternal was divine and spiritual. With this doctrine it could easily construct its theory of the destruction of the physical world at some date in the future, though it did not stop to consider the inconsistency of this with its doctrine of the physical resurrection. But in the course of its development it unconsciously modified this by maintaining that this physical body was refined and "spiritualized," probably influenced by the Pauline doctrine of the "spiritual body." All this aside, however, the chief thing is its turning the tables on Greek thought by supplanting the dominance of matter by that of spirit. The Greek started with sense perception for determining his idea of the world and though he admitted a transcendental world, he still made it material and like the world of sense in its properties. Its difference from the sensible world was only in density or degree, not in kind. But

its inertia even partly granted left some problems unsolved, as is apparent in the attraction and repulsion of Empedocles and the "swerving" of the atoms in Epicurus. But by setting up a self-active force and making it spiritual, not material, Christianity established a distinction in kind between matter and spirit, accounted for change, and made the dominance of the trancendental the primary doctrine, while it made the material ephemeral and phenomenal. In other words, while it admitted the existence of matter, it set up a reality over it as creative and regulative while it made this reality intelligent. With Greek thought the divine was but regulative and not creative, and also limited in its regulative agency. With Christianity this power was both creative and regulative and with no limitations on its power.

With faith in this power men would have little difficulty in maintaining some doctrine of immortality, whether they obtained evidence for it or not, and so Christianity ruled history for many centuries. But a day of reckoning came with the revival of science. The first revolution to theological system was the discovery of the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy. It was, of course, Copernican astronomy that marked the rise of the scientific spirit and the crucial attack on the theological cosmogony, but the transcendental philosophy of Christianity was not primarily affected until the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy were discovered. These completely reversed the tables on religious thought. What had been regarded as created and phenomenal, now became eternal, and with the natural tendencies of the human mind toward a single reality behind all things, "spirit" began to be resolved into a phenomenon of matter. There was a return to the scientific point of view that starts with sensory experience as the basis for judging the nature of reality

and the supersensible remains to prove its claims. These claims are not taken for granted, and when they do not prove their right to recognition, the actual facts of experience, whether physical or mental, were referred to the material for explanation. Consciousness, instead of being a phenomenon of some immaterial substance or reality is explained by regarding it as a phenomenon of matter. Such a thing as a soul was not needed in its scheme, either to explain consciousness or to save such ethics as the physical life might support.

This theory grew with the advance of science. Chemistry, physiology and biology increased the facts in defense of it and abnormal psychology in particular, with its correlation of brain lesions and the variations in the integrity of consciousness, seemed to make materialism invulnerable. Disease, accident, autopsies, insanity and every resource in the field of human observation confirmed the conclusion, until only sophisticated philosophers and the religious mind, which knew little and cared as little about science, still clung to the rejection of materialism, the first class from equivocation and disingenuous thinking and the latter from ignorance of the facts and the problem. It has been the dominant view of science almost ever since its revival.

A large class of men both in science and philosophy still deny materialism, but a little examination of their terms will easily explain that and to this we shall have to give some immediate attention. But these deniers of it cannot deny the fact that historically-except with Tertullian, and he did not accept atomic doctrines as held by the materialists of his age-materialism has always denied survival after death. The atomic doctrine of Epicurus and Democritus did not make this necessary, because it admitted the existence of a soul, or ethereal organism and did not regard consciousness as a function of the grosser physical body. But when

the "spiritual body" or "ethereal organism" was abandoned in philosophy, and when the atomic theory was modified so that consciousness could be made a function of a compound or composite organism, the denial of immortality became a logical necessity, unless the action of Providence was invoked, as it was in the doctrine of the physical resurrection, to restore the physical body and its personality to existence. On any other assumption, survival could not be defended, and materialism became the point of view which implied by necessity that consciousness could not survive. The natural consequence was that all who had to protect themselves against religious hostility found it to their interest to deny materialism. But this class did not always show any special or positive interest in the doctrine of immortality. They could expect the plebs to draw an inference from their denial, which they themselves did not draw, and their own interests were saved the risks of persecution.

But it will be well to call attention here at some length to the sophistication which plays an equivocal role in this subject. If a psychic researcher tells you that materialism is the only theory that can be maintained by science, the philosopher may rise and say that he does not believe that science supports materialism and perhaps that he does not believe in materialism as having any foundation whatever in its support. But he usually evades the question of the survival of personality. He has no missionary zeal for immortality and stigmatizes psychic research as unnecessary for the defense of survival. He may ridicule the psychic researcher for saying a word of apology for materialism or for admitting that materialism has any strength or support whatever. Indeed many a philosopher will speak in confident tones that materialism has long since been refuted and abandoned and perhaps sneer at you