salutary results; but the object is not fully attained. Open the
journals and the reviews, and you will learn that Germany is, in these
days, the principal centre of materialism. It is unhappily so rich in
this respect, that it can afford to engage in exportation, and to
furnish professors of the school to other countries of Europe.

Doctor Büchner has published, under the title of _Force and Matter_, a
small volume which has rapidly reached a seventh edition, and has lately
been translated into French.[64] Materialism is there set forth with
perfect arrogance, or, to speak more moderately, with perfect audacity.
The author pretends to confine himself strictly within the domain of
experience, and it is wonderful with what haughtiness he proscribes the
researches of philosophy. It would seem therefore that the question of
the nature of things ought to remain outside the circle of his studies.
Nevertheless, he declares matter to be eternal and the universe
infinite. I ask you how long it would be necessary to have lived in
order to pronounce matter eternal in the name of experience; and what
journeys it would have been necessary to make, before ascertaining by
means of observation that the universe is infinite. We shall have
occasion to recur to this subject. Meanwhile we may be very sure that
experience supplies no system of metaphysics, and that materialism is a
metaphysical system as strongly marked as any. When its adepts cry out,
Away with philosophy! they mean by that simply: We will have no good
philosophy, that we may be free to make bad philosophy of our own
without rivalry. A proceeding which reminds one of certain demagogues
who cry with all their might, Down with tyrants! and who thus succeed in
making out of the fear of the tyranny of others the solid foundation of
their own despotism.

We find then in Germany, first of all the doctrine of the idea set forth