Chapter 373
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The same fate is in store for spiritualistic phenomena and all the other psychological manifestations of the inner man. Since the days of Hume, whose researches culminated in a nihilistic Idealism, Psychology has gradually shifted its position to one of crass Materialism. Hume is regarded as a Psychologist, and yet he denied à priori the possibility of phenomena in which millions now believe, including many men of Science. The Hylo-Idealists of to-day are rank Annihilationists. The schools of Spencer and Bain are respectively positivist and materialist, and not metaphysical at all. It is Psychism and not Psychology; it reminds one as little of the Vedântic teaching as does the pessimism of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann recall the Esoteric Philosophy, the heart and soul of true Buddhism.