200
THE STAR IN THE WEST
Utilitarianism
, offspring
of a distorted
and
epileptic
steam -mania , has bemerded
us with
its
panting slime
,
and wound
us
tight
in
the
arachnoid
meshes
of
its
kakodemoniacal
web
,
until we stand before ourselves
,
no
longer
homo
sapiens
,
but
alone
,
naked
and un
adorned
,
a
cinder
-
sprinkled
,
soot
-
besmeared
,
spider
legged
,
homo ridiculissimus
!
Periodically
as
the adepts soar
above
vulgar
ap
preciation
,
and when vulgar understanding
has
,
swine
like
,
trodden their pearls
of
wisdom back into the mud
of
its
own sty
,
a
great wave
of
materialism sweeps over
the face
of
the globe
.
This
system
of
thought
,
built
on
the illusive
phantasmagoria
of
the mind
,
found
in
the West
a
master
-
mind
to
mould
it
into shape
,
in
the
personality
of
Democritus
of
Abdera
;
and from the day
when that sage materialized
the creations
of
his brain
to
that
of
Büchner and the present
-
day
mud
-
larks
,
it
has formed the stumbling
-
block
to
nearly every great
thinker
,
and the veritable pus puriens
of
the common
mind
.
However
,
out
of
the
slough
grew
,
as
must
always
happen
,
a
subtle plant
;
and
in
the form
of
Newton
,
whose scientific demonstration ofauto
-
kinetic
ism
,
many
ages
previously adumbrated
by
Empedo
cles
and
Democritus
,
gave
the
death
-
blow
to
that
Empiricism
,
which
may
be
typified
in
Locke's
asser
tion that
“
motion and figure are really
in
the manna
,
to
which
Berkeley
attributed
a
purely
mental exist
ence
;
for
he
asserts again
and again
that
the
only
substantial
existence
is
the
hypothetical
substratum
of
mind
,
i.e.
,
spirit
.'
And
this
,
as
Huxley
himself
|
All these philosophers end
in
the same quandary
as
the old
gentleman who with only one tooth
in
his mouth
tried
to
spike
a
pickled onion
.