BOOKS
53
mt;table peace. For if "philosophic materialism" is meaningless, it is at
least a doctrine with which a mature person can have some sympathy,
since it eschews an anthropocentric approach to nature, and is therefore
in harmony with the whole movement of modern thought since Coper–
nicus. But this is more than idealism, which of course is as retrograde
in its philosophic orientation as it is reactionary in its political implica–
tions, can claim for itself.
It may be argued that all that is meant by "materialism" is the
belief that there is only one Nature, and that the only way to under–
stand it is to study its processes by means of the empirical methods of
science; in short, Naturalism.
If
it is called materialism, it may be
urv;ed, it is to emphasize the fact that the scientist can have no com–
merce with agencies or forces or powers which cannot be observed
empirically; and further to emphasize the fact that "consciousness" or
"mind" is to be explained by means of the same method, essentially, as
has been so successful in explaining other natural phenomena. Unfor–
tunately for the argument, however, something more is meant by
materialism than this, since materialism involves also a metaphysic of
substa~lce
and qualities, proper to a belief that the quest of science is for
"the nature of things," rather than for the structural processes of nature.
And the objections to a search for "the nature of things" are so many
that we must be content to list here only two or three. Nothing is gained
by asserting that all of nature is "matter," for what do we know when
we know that? And what is meant by the remark, made by Levy, that
"mind" is a "quality" of matter? What do we know of its genesis, its
prou~~ses,
and of its control, when we know that?
Committed to a metaphysic of substance and quality, the philo–
sophic materialist keeps on fighting the ghosts of 19th century idealism
with weapons which the history of philosophy down to our very day
has shown are inadequate to blast it. For against materialism the argu–
ments of a Ward, or in our day, even of a Dawes Hicks, are still valid.
W~th
a materialistic metaphysic, "mind" remains
an entity,
however
much the materialist may assert that he does not mean an entity by it,
a..d the alleged mind-body problem hangs over him like a poisonous
cloud which ends up by suffocating him. The problem of the existence
of the material world is only downed by ignoring it. And the obsession
with these pseudo-problems, all arising out of materialism, prevents us
fTOI!l turning to an investigation of such aspects of social behaviour as
communication, by means of which the mysteries of the so-called "mind"
have in our day already begun to be resolved.
It is unnecessary therefore for the economic determinist to burden
himself with the obsolete baggage of metaphysical materialism. All the
more since this baggage is of no use whatever in enabling him to achieve
an
ad~quate
control within the physical or the social field.
This is not the only serious difficulty which the careful reader of
Levy's book will come across. There is at least one other, involving
perhaps more immediate practical consequences for those to whom this
