Besides all this, these questions, and the different solutions of which they are susceptible, have their epochs of ardor or languor, of favor or discredit. In our days, the fruitful activity and the brilliant progress of the sciences of the material world, come in aid of the doctrine of Materialism. This progress is, however, far from being as exclusive of other progress as is often said. Although less popular than a few years ago, Spiritualism has not ceased to be an active and influential doctrine in the elevated region of philosophy, and the Christian awakening persists and develops itself energetically in the face of the adversaries of Christianity. The times in which we live are entitled to more justice than men accord to them; intellectual labors are now very extensive and very varied; the most different tendencies coexist, and pursue their independent career. Even in this, Materialism is again the doctrine of appearances; it is neither so strong nor so near its triumph as it has the air of being.
Nothing proves this better than the hesitation and persistent embarrassment of the most distinguished among its adherents. The circumstance noticed by M. de Remusat twenty-five years ago, is recurring at the present day as plainly as ever. Sometimes we find disavowals of the consequences of the principle of Materialism, and attempts of all kinds to escape from those consequences; sometimes we find efforts made to disguise the principle itself under purer colors. A general and enduring instinct in man persists in protesting against the appearances upon which Materialism is founded. Man does not believe either himself or the universe to be exclusively matter. The distinction between matter and mind is a natural and spontaneous, a primitive and permanent, belief of the human race.
And is this, then, merely an instinct and an aspiration, a proud pretension of human nature? Is it not, on the contrary, the innate sentiment, the intimate knowledge of that essential fact in humanity of which observation recognizes and evidences the existence?
The fact to which I allude is the following: As soon as a consciousness of life is awakened in man—as soon as he feels and perceives what is taking place within him—he has a perception of himself as of a real, personal, and distinct being. He gives voice to this feeling and this perception as soon as he uses the word "I," and he does so before he has any clear knowledge in detail of the being whose existence he so recognizes and affirms.
When, in the natural development of life, man thus makes himself as a real and personal being, the object of his own observation, he recognizes in himself as such real and personal being certain facts in their nature essentially different. On the one side, he recognizes a body inherent in his being, which forms part of his being, and through which he communicates with the external world, either by the impressions which he receives from that world, or by the modes in which he acts upon that world. On the other side, whether he regard himself as, so to say, the theater of action, or as the very actor, he recognizes himself to be a single being, a being permanent and abiding, ever the same in the midst of the variety of his personal impressions or of his actions upon the world beyond him; and this, too, in spite of the complications and incessant transformations of his body, the organ and the medium of those impressions and actions.
Thus it is that in man's consciousness there is a manifestation and proof at once of the unity and of the complex nature of the human being; that is, in accordance with the spontaneous language of mankind, at once of the distinction and of the union of the soul and of the body. This is the primitive and essential fact of man in his actual life.