Today a fresh wave of interest in philosophical speculation has arisen. The dissolution of old doctrines under the influence of science in the nineteenth century gave rise for a time to a rational materialism of which Huxley and Haeckel were conspicuous exemplars; but the later crumbling of moral standards, amidst the dizziness of mental liberation, has brought about a sense of restlessness and cerebral panic, and for the moment we witness the amusing spectacle of a reactionary scrambling for shelter beneath the wing of a supernatural belief either blindly conceived without intelligent reflection, or tenuously modified to accommodate as many angles of scientific truth as can be accommodated by a system of extra-rational origin.

Hence spring Fundamentalism and Modernism: both defensive emotional reactions against the ethical chaos of the present; and, as such, entitled to the sincere respect of all who realise that the sole beauty of life resides in its traditional patterns. It would not be the wish of any responsible materialist to destroy or combat the major social conditions at which these fervid believers are aiming; and the utmost attack of logic on faith serves only to replace an irrational with a rational reason for orderly life and thought.

The materialist denies that any standard is divine or absolute, and would free our conceptions of conduct from those supernatural fetters which impart a false perspective and cause the former believer to lose his moral sense as soon as he loses his faith. Conduct, of course, is only a side issue in the search for truth. But, so far as the modern materialist is interested in it at all, he merely recommends with gentle cynicism the adherence of each person to the ethical system in which he was reared, as constituting the only authentic source, in a purposeless cosmos without absolute standards, of those relative standards necessary to the orderly life and mental comfort of mankind.

Many specious arguments continue to be advanced by those labouring for a survival of religion. Fundamentalists, of course, do not argue; but the Modernists are very ingenious in adapting the language and conceptions of their ancient enemy, science, to their own uses, thus hoping to effect a reconciliation with that powerful adversary. Foremost among their contentions is that which affirms the existence of a “soul” and the truth of immortality by proclaiming mind a thing and thereupon invoking the scientific principle of the conservation of matter and energy to prove that it can never be destroyed—an argument, of course, which not only confuses the general mental principle with individual personality, but forgets that the law of conservation denies the fresh creation as well as the destruction of matter and energy, a point which would not allow for the birth of new souls! To the materialist, mind seems very clearly not a thing, but a mode of motion or form of energy.

Now, although the sum of energy in the universe is (speaking without reference to the very recent discoveries in intra-atomic physics and chemistry) virtually indestructible, we see very clearly that it is most eminently subject to transformations from one form to another. Mechanical energy becomes electricity under the appropriate conditions, and, under other conditions, that electricity becomes light and heat. Nothing is lost, but all is changed.

Now I regard the vital principle as just such a form of energy—and mind is only one of the many complex manifestations of that principle. It is a product and attribute of certain forms and processes of matter; and when that matter is disintegrated, it ceases to exist—just as molecular heat ceases to exist upon the dispersal or disintegration of the material molecules which make it possible. Nothing is lost, any more than when electrical energy is transformed to luminous energy; but a complete metamorphosis occurs, and the identity of mind and life becomes effaced as the units of energy pass away in other forms—mostly radiant heat and other waves in the ether. Mind is no more immortal than a candle flame. The flame is just as immortal, if we wish to take a poetic view and reflect that the units of energy therein are never lost to the universe, but merely dissipated and incorporated into other forms and phenomena.

“Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,

Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”

One might add, as noted above, that ultra-modern discovery, as based upon the phenomena of radio-activity, has opened wide and strange vistas, and perhaps defeated in the last analysis the idea of the indestructibility of matter and energy. Whilst matter and energy are clearly indestructible so far as any hitherto understood principles are concerned, it seems increasingly clear that cosmic force and substance have other and deeper relations and limitations—whose kinship to the phenomena we know is like that of an hour-hand to a minute- or second-hand on a clock.

It seems, in the light of recent discoveries, that all matter is in a state of balance betwixt formation and disintegration—evolution and devolution—and that the infinite cosmos is like a vast patch of summer sky out of which little cirrus clouds gather here and there, presently to be dissolved into blankness again. The universes we know correspond to the little cirrus clouds of that summer sky, being merely transient aggregations of electrons condensed from that field of ungrouped electrons which we call space, and soon to be dissolved into that space again. This process of formation and destruction is the fundamental attribute of all entity—it is infinite Nature, and it always has been and always will be. The world, life, and universe we know, are only a passing cloud—yesterday in eternity it did not exist, and tomorrow its existence will be forgotten. Nothing matters—all that happens happens through the automatic and inflexible interacting of the electrons, atoms, and molecules of infinity according to patterns which are co-existent with basic entity itself. The general idea is that of a kaleidoscope with its endless rearrangements—there is no object or purpose in ultimate creation, since all is a ceaseless repetitive cycle of transitions from nothing back to nothing again.

However, all this need give worry to none. The aspirations of the human spirit, so movingly cited by theists, are pretty enough in themselves; and one need neither go to the trouble of breaking them up and finding their physiological components (although that is relatively easy to do) nor impute to them a cosmic significance which, though poetic to imagine, is certainly not logically deducible from their existence and characteristics. It is most sensible just to accept the universe as it is, and be done with it. All is illusion, hollowness, and nothingness—but what does that matter? Illusions are all we have, so let us pretend to cling to them; they lend dramatic values and comforting sensations of purpose to things which are really valueless and purposeless. All one can logically do is to jog placidly and cynically on, according to the artificial standards and traditions with which heredity and environment have endowed him. He will get most satisfaction in the end by keeping faithful to these things.