ABSTRACT
The mention of material substance naturally suggests the doctrine of 'materialism, ' but philosophical materialism is not necessarily knit up with belief in 'matter,' as a metaphysical principle. Accordingly, in every genuine metaphysical debate some practical issue, however conjectural and remote, is involved. Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; spiritualism means the affirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope. Pragmatically, then, the abstract word 'design' is a blank cartridge. But free-will has also been discussed pragmatically, and, strangely enough, the same pragmatic interpretation has been put upon it by both disputants. Free-will pragmatically means novelties in the world, the right to expect that in its deepest elements as well as in its surface phenomena, the future may not identically repeat and imitate the past.
