I shall not refuse myself the pleasure of refuting this hypothesis by the mouth of a contemporary philosopher, whom I shall soon myself have to combat. "Nothing," says M. Vacherot, "proves that the hypothesis of Materialism is true; on the contrary, positive facts evidence its falsity. ... If the soul be only the result of the play of the organs, how is it that the soul is able to resist the impressions and the appetites of the body, to direct, concentrate, and govern its faculties? If the will be but the instinct in a different form, how explain its empire over the instinct? {344} This fact is an irresistible argument; it is the rock upon which Materialism has always wrecked itself, and upon which it will continue to do so. ... The wisdom of the ancients pronounced its decree more than two thousand years ago. 'Do we not see,' says Socrates, according to Plato, 'that the soul governs all the elements of which it is pretended that it is composed? that the soul resists them throughout the whole course of life, and subdues them in every way, repressing some harshly and painfully, as where the gymnastic or the medical method is resorted to; repressing others more gently, rebuking these, warning those, speaking to desires, to anger, to fear, as to things of a nature alien to its own? So Homer, in the "Odyssey," represents Ulysses as "Smiting his breast, and chiding thus his heart: Bear this, O heart, thou that hast worse endured." [Footnote 74] [Footnote 74: Στῆθος δὲ πληξὰς, κραδίην ἠνίπαπε μύθῳ, Τέτλαθι δὲ, κραδίη. καὶ κύντερον ἄλλο ποτ᾿ ἔτλης. Odyssey, Book xx, v. 17.] {345} "'Do you think,' adds Socrates, 'that Homer would have so expressed himself had, in his conception, the soul been a mere harmony, necessarily governed by the passions of the body? Did he not rather think that the soul ought to govern and master those passions, and that the soul is something far more divine than any harmony?'" [Footnote 75] [Footnote 75: La Métaphysique et la science, by M. Vacherot, vol. i, p. 174; Plato, Phæd, xliii.] Materialists themselves have felt the feebleness of their hypothesis; to support it they have invented a second hypothesis. "No force without matter, no matter without force," [Footnote 76] says Dr. Buchner, at the present day one of the most resolute interpreters of the doctrine. That is to say, not being able to explain facts by matter alone, as matter is observed and conceived naturally by the human mind, they endow matter with what they term _force_, a principle of movement and of production. [Footnote 76: Le Materialisme contemporain en Allemagne, by M. Paul Janet, of the Institute, p. 20. 1864.] {346}