By the term materialism is usually meant the metaphysical view that the basis of everything that exists is matter, or that nothing except matter exists. Materialism seems to have been histor ically earlier than its opposite, spirit ualism (see Idealism), or than the dualism which recognizes both matter and spirit (see Descartes, Rene). Thus, in the oldest Greek philosophy is found the assumption that everything originated from a primary matter, and that all phenomena are but transformations of this, and shall one day re turn to it again, after which new changes will begin, and so on ad infinitum. The concept of spirit, as an object of interior perception, and still more of spirit as a cosmic principle, came later. And even where, as with Anasagoras, spirit appears as the creator of the world, it may be taken as materially conceived. Plato is the first to reach the concept of an absolutely immaterial cosmic principle. With him the spiritual or intelligible world is of a higher order than the world of phenomena cognizable by the senses, which comes into being through the operation of the former. While all true materialism is in a sense monistic, recognizing but a single principle as the essence of the world, this essence may differentiate itself into a finer and a coarser matter, and one of these may influence the other. Greek philosophy begins with a strictly monistic materialism; Thales recognizes water, Anaximenes fire, as the source of all things. But in Heraclitus, although all phenomena are transformations of the principle of fire, and although the Logos which brings harmony out of all is not a second principle but immanent in matter, yet fire itself is opposed, as a finer and more spiritual element, to two coarser ones, water and earth, developed indeed out of itself. This dualistic view was more fully worked out later by the Stoics.
Speaking generally, the materialism of modern times, descending from Hobbes and winning adherents at first more in France than in England or Germany, has been monistic, in so far as all spiritual processes are conceived merely as functions of matter. This view was set forth by Lamettrie (1709-51), whose best-known work is L'Homme machine (Leyden, 1748; new ed., Paris, 1865), and by Holbach in the SysOme de la nature (see Deism, II., § 3). The great Encyclopedie (see Encyclopedists) was to a large extent a product of materialism, although Positivism (q.v.), which is often confused with it, contributes its share. Germany produced many monistic materialists in the nine. teenth century. The most heated controversy broke out about the middle of that century owing to the publication of a lecture by the physiologist Rudolf Wagncr, Ueber Menachensch6pfung and Seelensubstanz (Göttingen, 1854), to which Karl Voigt replied in his once famous satirical pamphlet Köhlerglaube and Wissenschaft (ib. 1854). To the further spread of materialistic views the principal contributors were Jakob Moleschott, especially in his Der Kreislauf des Lebens (5th ed., Mainz, 1876-1885), and Ludwig Büchner with his popular treatise Kraft and Stof (1855; 21st ed., Leipsic, 1904; Eng. transl., Force and Matter, London,. 1864). Buchner did more for the spread of this view than Ludwig Feuerbach (q.v.), who is often classed as a materialist, or than David Friedrich Strauss (q.v.), who in Der alts und der neue Glaube (Leipsic, 1872; Eng. transl., The Old Faith and the New, London and New York, 1873) leans strongly toward materialism without being able wholly to free himself from Hegelian pantheism. Systems more or less akin to materialism have been set forth in more recent times by Heinrich Czolbe and Eugen Dühring, without winning any wide following; and a comparatively moderate essay in the same direction is found in Du Bois-Reymond's well-known lecture Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens (Leipsic, 1872) and his book Die sieben Weltralsel (ib. 1882). Less moderate is the. much-discussed work of Ernst
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