future does not belong to lawless violence. In
the long run, the wisdom that is from above will be justified in her
children.

SURVIVAL AND IMMORTALITY

(1917)

The recrudescence of superstition in England was plain to all observers
many years before the war; it was perhaps most noticeable among the
half-educated rich. Several causes contributed to this phenomenon. The
craving for the supernatural, a very ancient and deeply rooted
thought-habit, had been suppressed and driven underground by the
arrogant dominance of a materialistic philosophy, and by the absorption
of society in the pursuit of gain and pleasure. Modern miracles were
laughed out of court. But materialism has supernaturalism for its
nemesis. An abstract science, erecting itself into a false philosophy,
leaves half our nature unsatisfied, and becomes morally bankrupt before
its intellectual errors are exposed. Supernaturalism is the refuge of
the materialist who wishes to make room for ideal values without
abandoning the presuppositions of materialism. By dovetailing acts of
God into the order of nature, he materialises the spiritual, but brings
the Divine will into the world of experience, from which it had been
expelled, and produces a rough scheme of providential government, by
which he can live.

The revolt against scientific materialism was made much easier by the
disintegration of the mechanical theory itself. Biology found itself
cramped by the categories of inorganic science, and claimed its
autonomy. The result was a fatal breach in the defences of materialism,
for biology is being driven to accept final causes, and would be glad to
adopt some theory of vitalism, if it could do so without falling back
into the old error of a mysterious 'vital force.' Biological truth, it
is plain, cannot be reduced to the purely quantitative categories of
mathematics and physics. Then psychology aspired to be a philosophy of
real existence, and attacked both absolutism and materialism. The
pretensions of psychology rehabilitated subjectivism and founded
pragmatism, till reactionary theology took heart of grace and defended
crude supernaturalism, with the whole apparatus of sacerdotal magic, as
the 'Gospel for human needs.' All protection against the grossest
superstitions was thus swept away. With no fixed standard of reference
to distinguish fact from fiction, it was possible to argue that
'whatever suits souls is true.'

In this atmosphere many o