express the deep depression of the creed proposed to us, in place of that which tells us "Rejoice always, and again I say unto you rejoice." Mr. Spencer's expression for the First Cause is fully accepted, since we are told, as to the unknowable, that we Know (!), to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. (p. 36.)

Again we read:

Were mankind deserving of the title "rational," which they arrogate to themselves, there can be no question that they would consider, as the most necessary of all branches of instruction for themselves and for their children, that which professes to acquaint them with the conditions of the existence they prize so highly, which teaches them how to avoid disease, and to cherish health in themselves and those who are dear to them. (p. 98.) It becomes clear that all living powers are cognate, and that all living forms are fundamentally of one character. (p. 142.)

Even those manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will, which we rightly name the higher faculties, are "to every one but the subject of them, known only as transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body." (p. 135.) In the first place, we should be glad to know on what principle Professor Huxley considers one human mental manifestation "higher" than another; but letting this pass, surely "known by means of changes of position," would be the more correct form of expression. Yet sometimes the Professor does not scruple to go beyond the facts of phenomena, into the region of abstractions and occult causes, as freely as his neighbours. Thus he tells us: "We do not hesitate to believe that, in some way or another," the properties of water "result from the properties of the component elements of water." (p. 150.)

It is difficult to understand this bold assertion on Professor Huxley's own principles. At other times he does not scruple to ignore and practically deny what is evident to the reason, though hidden from the sense, as when he tells us that:

A nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out to be what may be termed the structural unit of the human body. As a matter of fact, the body, in its earliest state, is a mere multiple of such units; and, in its present condition, it is a multiple of such units, variously modified. (p. 140.)

Yet who can doubt that in the living body there is a latent, active principle wanting in the recent corpse, though composed of the same identical masses of nucleated protoplasm?

The Professor has of late become the expositor of the idealist philosophy, according to which mental phenomena are to each individual most unquestionably the primary objects of know

ledge, and yet he tells us "it is obvious that our knowledge of what we call the material world, is, to begin with, at least as certain and definite as that of the spiritual world." (p. 155.) And more recently, he has said, as to "psychoses" and "neuroses," "The right view is that they are connected together in the relation of cause and effect, psychoses being secondary, and following on neuroses! "

Finally we meet with the following passage:

If a man asks me what the politics of the inhabitants of the moon are, and I reply that I do not know; that neither I, nor any one else, have any means of knowing; and that, under these circumstances, I decline to trouble myself about the subject at all......in replying thus, I conceive that I am simply honest and truthful, and show a proper regard for the economy of time. So Hume's strong and subtle intellect takes up a great many problems about which we are naturally curious, and shows us that they are essentially questions of lunar politics, in their essence incapable of being answered, and therefore not worth the attention of men who have work to do in the world.

He then quotes Hume saying:

"If we take in hand any volume of divinity, or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence ?-No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."

Professor Huxley adds,

Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble ourselves about matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and can know nothing? (p. 159.)

The expression "can know nothing" is sufficiently dogmatic, especially on the part of one who tells us that "of the existence of self" we have not, nor "can we by any possibility have," the highest degree of certainty. (p. 359.)

In his address to the members of the Midland Institute he remarks:

I take it that the good of mankind means the attainment, by every man, of all the happiness which he can enjoy, without diminishing the happiness of his fellow-men.

And,

If we inquire what kinds of happiness come under this definition, we find those derived from the sense of security or peace; from wealth, or com

* In his last lecture at the Finsbury Institution, given in the past winter,

modity, obtained by commerce; from art; from knowledge, or science; and, finally, from sympathy or friendship.

And here we must remark, in spite of his contact with many working men, how utter must be the Professor's lack of acquaintance with the real life of the poor, thus completely to exclude from the catalogue of human happiness all considerations of religion, its hopes, its stimulus, its consolations. Had he but practised that profession which counts him amongst its members, he could hardly have failed to encounter amongst the sick and suffering some poor souls whose one stay and consolation, amidst a crushing accumulation of earthly woe, has been a trustful belief in a heavenly Father's love, and the prospect of a supernatural union with Him in the life beyond the grave.

As before, we may lay down the following propositions as the summary of Professor Huxley's moral and religious teaching:I. Physical science is the one only fountain at which spiritual thirst can be quenched.

II. Sadness is of the essence of religion.

III. The First Cause is inexorable and pitiless.

IV. He looks with favour on the learned Dives, not on the poor and ignorant Lazarus.

V. Physical welfare and happiness are the summum bonum. VI. Security, wealth, culture, and sympathy are the only rational objects of pursuit.

VII. All aspirations or efforts after divine things-the love of God or beatitude in a future life-are simple waste of time, if not worse, and are fit only for lunatics.

VIII. Knowledge of all such subjects is impossible to us.

If we were to pursue the inquiry from the pontiffs down to the acolyths and ostiarii of the physically-scientific hierarchy, far more exaggerated expressions could easily be produced, tending to drive further home the principles insinuated by their leaders. Thus Mr. Barratt, in his Physical Ethics, tells us nakedly that "no pleasure is bad, except when it means pain," and that "the good is pleasure." Mr. Winwood Reade, a friend and ardent disciple of Mr. Darwin, very pithily states the ultimate conclusions of his recent work, which deals with so wide a field, and is entitled the "Martyrdom of Man." He therein tells us: "God-worship is idolatry; prayer is useless; the soul is not immortal; there are no rewards, and there are no punishments in a future state." Of course Mr. Reade fully adopts Mr. Darwin's views as to the essential brutality of our nature; and indeed almost, though quite involuntarily, caricatures the teaching of his master regarding the ape-origin of man.

Such crude views, " le rationalisme grossier," and its grotesque pretensions to intellectual eminence, have been well characterized by Mr. James Stirling :*

"There was a time," says Hegel, "when a man who did not believe in ghosts or the devil was named a philosopher!" But an "advanced thinker," to these distinctions negative of the unseen, adds-what is positive of the seen-an enlightened pride in his father the monkey! He may enjoy, perhaps, a well-informed satisfaction in contemplating mere material phenomena that vary with conditions, as the all of this universe, or he may even experience an elevation into the moral sublime when he points to his future in the rock, in the form of those bones and other remains of a Pithecus intelligens, which, in all probability (he reflects) no subsequent intelligence will ever handlebut monkey is the pass-word! Sink your pedigree as man, and adopt for family tree a procession of the skeletons of monkeys-then superior enlightenment radiates from your very person, and your place is fixed — a place of honour in the acclamant brotherhood that names itself "advanced"! So it is in England at present; this is the acknowledged pinnacle of English thought and English science now. Just point in these days to the picture of some huge baboon, and, suddenly-before such enlightenment-superstition is disarmed, priests confess their imposture, and the Church sinks-beneath the hippocampus of a gorilla. ("The Secret of Hegel," Preface, p. xxxi.)

These words express truly enough a state of opinion still but too widely prevalent in England. We are not without hope, however, that ere long a more general diffusion of a truer philosophy will cause the essential difference between the psychical natures of man and of brutes, to be more clearly apprehended. Then a belief in the monkey-ancestry of man will very soon pass away into the limbo of discarded physical superstitions.

It would indeed be well if some of those who so recklessly advocate popular teaching, such as that we have called attention to, would ponder over the utterances of continental infidels, in order that they might see the logical outcome of those same popular teachings; for it is continental writers who most fearlessly develop their principles to their full results.

Guillaume Marr, à journalist of Lausanne, in a general report addressed to the Conseil d'Etat some years ago, dared to assert as follows:

Faith in a personal and living God is the origin and the fundamental cause of our miserable social condition. The true road to liberty, to equality, and to happiness, is atheism. No safety on earth, so long as man holds on by a thread to Heaven. Let nothing henceforward

* See "Fortnightly Review" for November, 1871, p. 539.

shackle the spontaneity of the human kind. Let us teach man that there is no other God than himself; that he is the Alpha and the Omega of all things, the superior being and the most real reality.

Again, Caro observes:

Science conducts God with honour to its frontiers, thanking him for his provisional services. ("L'Idée de Dieu," p. 47.)

Feuerbach tells us plainly:

Les antichrétiens, les athées, les humanistes (qui ne reconnaissent d'autre Dieu que l'humanité) aujourd'hui sont bien maltraités; mais ayons bon courage; l'athéisme humanitaire n'est plus dans les camarillas des grands seigneurs riches et fainéants, comme au xviiie siècle, il est descendu dans le cœur des travailleurs qui sont pauvres, des travailleurs d'esprit comme des travailleurs de bras; il aura sous peu le gouvernement du globe." ("Qu'est-ce que la Religion," p. 586.)

Another writer of the same school remarks:

Les feuilletonistes français, qui prétendent attaquer les moines, ne voient pas qu'ils font cause commune avec eux, puisqu'ils admettent, comme eux l'article fondamental, la notion de conscience morale et la distinction du bien et du mal. Le plus célèbre d'entre eux n'est lui-même qu'un poëte jésuitique. Les seuls opposant véritable à l'imposture religieuse, c'est nous et nos doctrines purement et radicalement négatives. (Gratry, "Une Etude sur la Sophistique contemporaine," p. 153.)

Returning to our English physical expositors before quoted, we will now sum up the teaching in which they appear to concur, or at least the teaching which is the ultimate and logical outcome of their expositions-the dogmas which can hardly fail to impress themselves upon the minds of their disciples who follow them with so simple and unhesitating a trust. They may be drawn up as follows:

I. Temporal happiness is the one rational aim of life.

II. A positive belief in God and a future life is an unwarrantable superstition.

III. Virtue and pleasure are synonymous, for in root and origin they are identical.

IV. Men are essentially but brutes, no differences of kind dividing them.

V. The cause of all things has not personality, and consequently neither feeling, nor intelligence, nor will.

VI. All who pretend to teach religion are impostors or dupes. VII. Our physical science teachers are the supreme exponents of all truth, and the ultimate arbiters of all actions.

VIII. There is no such thing as real merit or demerit, as all