MATERIALISM. This the name for a certain mode of viewing the nature of mind, namely, to regard it either as mere matter, or as a product of the material organization. 'The opposite view is called spiritualism, and means that the mind, although united with the body, is not essentially dependent on bodily organs, but may have an existence apart from these. There has been much controversy on this question; and although in later times the immateriality of the mind has been the favorite view, and been treated by many as a supposition essential to the doctrine of man's immortality; yet, in the earliest ages •of the Christian church, the materialistic view was considered the most in unison with revelation, and was upheld against the excessive spiritualizing tendencies of the platonic schools. Tertullian contended that the sciiptures prove, in opposition to Plato, that the soul has a beginning, and is corporeal. He ascribes to it a peculiar character or consti tution, and even boundary, length, breadth, height, and figure. (This last view is incom patible with the definition of mind. See MIND.) To him, incorporeity was another name for nonentity (nihil est incotporale, nisi quod non est); and he extended the same principle to the Deity, who, he conceived, must have a body. He could not comprehend .either the action of outward thing,s on the mind, or the power of the mind to originate movements in outward things, unless it were corporeal.
The state of our knowledge at the present time shows us more and more. the intimacy of the alliance between our mental functions and our bodily organization. It would .appear that feeling, will, and thought are in all cases accompanied with physical changes; no valid exception to this rule has ever been established. Mind as known to us, there fore, must be considered as reposing upon a series of material organs, although it be totally unlike, and in fundamental contrast to, any of those properties or functions that we usually term rnaterial—extension, inertia, color, etc. We never can resolve mind into :matter; that would be a confounding of the greatest contrast that exists in the entire com. ,pass of our knowledge (see MIND); but we are driven to admit, from the whole tenor of modern investigation, that the two are inseparably united within the sphere of the animal 'kingdom. " Our consciousness in this life is an embodied consciousness. Human under standing and belief are related, in a variety of ways, to the original and successive states or the bodily organism from birth to death. Observation and experiment prove the important practical fact that the conscious life on earth of every individual is dependent on his organism and its history" (professor Fraser's Rational Philosophy). See Lange's able Gesehieltte des Materialismus (F,ng. transl. 187'7).