26
PARTISAN REVIEW
of specific issues in their proper terms in connection with concrete
evidence.
Regarding the identification in question, it suffices here to
note that the naturalist is one who of
1
necessity has respect for the
conclusions of natural science. Hence he is quite aware that
"matter" has in modern science none of the low, base, inert prop·
erties assigned to it in classic Greek and medieval philosophy:–
properties that were the ground for setting it
in
stark opposition
to all that is higher, and to which eulogistic adjectives may be
applied. In consequence he is aware that since "matter" and
"materialism" acquired their significance in contrast with some–
thing called "spirit" and "spiritualism," the fact that naturalism
has no place for the latter deprives the former base epithets of
philosophic significance. It would be difficult to find a greater
distance between any two terms than that which separates "matter"
in the Greek-medieval tradition and the technical signification,
suitably expressed only in mathematical symbols, the word bears
in science today.
Reference to science reminds us that nobody save perhaps
the most dogmatic supernaturalist will deny that modern methods
of experimental observation have wrought a profound transforma–
tion in the subject matters of astronomy, physics, chemistry and
biology, or that the change wrought in them has exercised the
deepest influence upon human relations. The naturalist adds
to recognition of this fact, a further fact of fateful signifi–
cance. He sees how anti-naturalism has operated to prevent the
application of scientific methods in the whole field of human and
social subject matter.
It
has thereby prevented science from com–
pleting its career and fulfilling its constructive potentialities, since
it has held the human is extra-natural and hence reserved for
organs and methods which are radically different from those that
have given man the command he now possesses in all affairs, issues,
and questions acknowledged to be natural. It is beyond human
imagination to estimate the extent to which undesirable features of
the present human situation are connected with the split, the divi–
sion, confusion and conflict that is embodied in this half-way,
mixed, unintegrated situation in respect to knowledge and attain–
ment of truth. Democracy cannot obtain either adequate recogni–
tion of its own meaning or coherent practical realization as long as
