The materialist, who tells
us that consciousness, sensation, thought, and the spontaneous power of
the will, so peculiar to man and to the higher animals, are altogether
so many outcomes of certain conditions of matter and nothing else, makes
at best merely a subjective statement. He cannot help acknowledging
that spontaneity is not a quality of matter. He is then driven to the
contention that what we believe to be spontaneous in us, is, after all,
an unconscious result of external impulses only. His contention rests
then on the basis of his own inner experience, or what he believes to be
such. This contention of his is, however, disputed by many, who no less
appeal to their own inner experience, or what they believe to be their
experience. It is then a question of inner experience of the one party
versus inner experience of the other. And such being the case, the
scientific materialist is driven to admit that his theory, however
correct it may be, rests, after all, on subjective experience, and can,
as such, not claim the rank of positive knowledge.
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