Malebranche, and indirectly Berkeley, who contributed so much in the sequel to Monistic Idealism, are indebted to Descartes, whilst every form of exaggerated Dualism which set mind and body in isolation and contrast traces its descent from him. In spite of serious faults and defects in their systems, it should be recognized that Descartes and Leibnitz contributed much of the most effective resistance to the wave of Materialism which acquired such strength in Europe at the end of the eighteenth and during the first half of the nineteenth centuries. In Germany, in addition to Kant, Fichte, and other Monistic Idealists, we find Lotze and Herbart advocating realistic forms of Spiritualism. The line of reasoning adopted by Berkeley against Materialism has never met with any real answer from the latter. If we were compelled to choose between the two, the most extreme Idealistic Materialism would be incomparably the more logical creed to hold.
Mind is more intimately known than matter, ideas are more ultimate than molecules.
External bodies are only known in terms of consciousness. To put forward as a final explanation that thought is merely a motion or property of certain bodies, when all bodies are, in the last resort, only revealed to us in terms of our thinking activity, is justly stigmatized by all classes of Spiritualists as utterly irrational. When the Materialist or Sensationist reasons out his doctrine, he is landed in hopeless absurdity. Materialism is in fact the answer of the men who do not think, who are apparently quite unaware of the presuppositions which underlie all science. The contention, old as Anaxagoras, that the order, adaptation, and design evidently revealed in the universe postulate a principle distinct from matter for its explanation is also a valid argument for Spiritualism.