Matter for Materialists; Letters in Vindication of the Principles Regarding the Nature of Existence of Dr. Berkeley (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1870 Excerpt: ... LETTER XVIII. IS NOT MATERIALISM THE PAEENT OF SCEPTICISM? At the close of the last letter, I had to record, after the extinction of the Alexandrian school, the triumph of the priest over the philosopher. An inscrutable Providence had decreed the necessity of that triumph. Greece, together with Egypt, and the rest of what then constituted the civilized world, had been made to form a part of the Roman Empire; and the Christian religion had become the religion of that empire, and an integral portion of that civilization. There was controversy betwixt the Latin and Greek Churches certainly, but it was Christian controversy. But the Christian religion could not preserve the Roman Empire from that decay which seems to be the fate of all dominations. The Roman world became incurably corrupt, and, as an assured consequence of that corruption, gradually and entirely emasculated. It was impossible but that religion should suffer during this sad process; and it did suffer. The active spirit of Faith imperceptibly waned into a gaudy but lifeless ceremonial; and mere scholastic disputes and verbal and metaphysical subtleties, like the ivy round the tree, gradually poisoned the healthy energy of a simple but energetic belief. The emasculate empire, at length, succumbed under the rude, but now resistless, blows of an outside barbarism. The wreck was almost total. Laws, manners, literature, language--all disappeared; and religion alone survived the ruin of civilization, in order, after a long struggle, to restore it. To the Western or Latin Church we owe such portions of Grecian and Roman literature as remain to us; and, more than that, to the Catholic Church we owe the establishment of representative systems of government, where circumstances would admit of them. But, wi...