“I consider this a very strong reasoning,” muttered Mr. Shatov.
“Ssh. Wait.” He was sitting intent, with an awakened youthful student’s face, meeting, through her agency, in England, a first-class intelligence. He would hear the beautiful building up, strophe and antistrophe, of the apparently unassailable argument, the pause, and then, in the same shapely cadences, its complete destruction, forever, the pleasant face smiling at the audience above the ruins, like a child who has just shattered a castle of bricks.
“Idealism was weakened by being supposed to be bound up with certain theological doctrines which became discredited. All these things account for the great strength of materialism some years ago. There has been a reaction against this, but the extent of the reaction has been exaggerated.”
“Quite so.”
“Wait, wait.”
“It still remains the belief to which most people tend on first leaving an unreflecting position. And many remain there. Science is a large element in our lives now, and if we try to make science serve as metaphysic, we get materialism. Nor is it to be wished—even by idealists—that materialism should become too weak. For idealism is seldom really vigorous except in those who have had a serious struggle with materialism. … It would be very difficult to disprove materialism, if we once accepted the reality of matter as a thing in itself. But, as we saw when considering dualism, such a reality of matter is untenable. And this conclusion is obviously more fatal to materialism than it was to dualism. And again, if materialism is true, all our thoughts are produced by purely material antecedents. These are quite blind, and are just as likely to produce falsehood as truth. We have thus no reason for believing any of our conclusions—including the truth of materialism, which is therefore a self-contradictory hypothesis.”