to confess that life in its essence cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms. The required principle of activity which we found cannot be represented as an independent vital principle, we now find cannot be represented as a principle inherent in living matter. If, by assuming its inherence, we think the facts are accounted for, we do but cheat ourselves with pseud-ideas."* Life is unexplainable. If already simple forms of existence in their ultimate properties are inconceivable, this most complicated form of existence is, so to speak, doubly inconceivable.

This magnificent honesty of the great thinker, while not detracting from the value of his biological theorems in general, nevertheless thoroughly shakes the foundations of his system. It may suffice to point out that even in "First Principles " additions have been made, which show traces of this skepticism as well as of skepticism referring to the other delicate problem, viz., of the mind. What might we but have expected

if the author could have revised his psychology! This work —however rich in thought-is full of untenable generalizations resting upon the current conception of empirical scientists, that sensation is the fundamental psychic factor which as a function of life must be counted with the other functions of the nervous system; psychology in this sense is primarily an explanation of sensory phenomena. Spencer protests already in the second edition of his work against the identification of mind and intellect. Mind (or soul), he says, consists largely and in one sense entirely of feelings. What he means by feeling we learn from the following: "Everywhere feeling is the substance of which, where it is present, intellect is the form." He does indeed divide feelings into sensations and emotions, but lays more stress upon the statement that no feeling of any kind could be entirely free from intellectual elements, than upon that which conditions the intellectual act, may it be called affect or will-in Spencer's language emotion. "Take away all sensations and emotions

* P. 120.

"Psychology,” p. 192.

and there remains no will. Excite some of these and will will, becoming possible, become actual only when one of them or a group of them gains predominance. Until there is a motive there is no will." Later on, however, Spencer changed in the opposite direction. In his last book, published in 1902, under the title: "Facts and Comments," there is a chapter, headed "Feeling versus Intellect," where he declares the practiced identification of mind with intelligence to be an enormous error, and reaches the conclusion that that part which we generally ignore when we speak of mind, is its essential part. The emotions are the masters, the intellect the servant. Does this not sound like Schopenhauer's "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung"? To the practical sense

of Spencer this truth was of great practical value. He had become extremely critical towards that culture which laid chief stress upon the development of the intellectual element of the mind (or soul); he speaks of a culture-mania growing out of that error. In this respect he is thoroughly Hegelian. "Were it fully understood that the emotions are the masters and the intellect the servant it would be seen that little can be done by improving the servant while the masters remain unimproved."+ We would estimate the moral element far higher, the intellectual far lower,, we would, e. g., cease from admiring that transcendental criminal Napoleon. Such sentiments clearly show Spencer's position towards all modern culture. Among his regrets published in this last book we read: "I detest that conception of social progress which presents as its aim increase of population, growth of wealth, spread of commerce. In the politico-economic ideal of human existence there is contemplated quantity only and not quality . . . the ideal we cherish is a transitory one a state in which our advance is measured by spread of manufactures, it differs in many ways from the past and is far removed from what we may hope will be attained in the future. One of its evil results is the threatened submergence of those still

remaining traces of life, which, though ruder and simpler, left men some leisure in which to live."* A profound melancholy mood permeates the chapter from which these quotations are taken.

We learn in this his last book more of Spencer's personality than from his former writings or his biographical sketches. A superficial observer is prone to consider Spencer a shallow utilitarian, who had no appreciation of the beautiful, no organ for the ideal. But the quoted sentiments disprove such judgment. Spencer's simple mode of life was illuminated by his love for art. He complains that that intellectual error had created deficient concepts of art and the purposes of art. The chief purpose of art is to him the pleasure which it brings, it is therefore for cultured folk the excitation of the noblest

and purest feelings. Among arts, music is to him the highest. He wrote more than forty years ago an essay on "the origin and function of music," in the closing sentence of which he says: "We cannot applaud enough the progress in musical culture which is more and more becoming one of the signs of our age." No less than six chapters of his last book are devoted to music. Conscious of his old-fashioned taste he confesses himself a disciple of Meyerbeer, in whose operas he finds more dramatic expression and melody combined than in any other composer known to him. With strong sympathies he speaks of the dignity and sublimity of the organ. This is due to Spencer's religious feelings. However far removed he is from any specific belief, except that of the unknowability of the origin of the universe, in which he saw the harmony between religion and philosophy, he nevertheless recognizes in all superstitions this germ of truth, "that the force, which reveals itself in consciousness is only a differently conditioned form of force, which reveals itself outside of consciousness." The object of religion is not destroyed through scientific analysis, and in its concrete forms science even enlarges the realm of religious feeling. The increasing ability of being astonished always accompanies the "Facts and Comments," p. 8.

progress of knowledge. "In the midst of the mysteries which become the more mysterious, the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty, that we are ever in the presence of an infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed "—this is the closing sentence of the chapter on "Religious Retrospect and Prospect" in that part of his Sociology which deals with ecclesiastical institutions and which was so much talked about when it first appeared. Even in the discussion of the forms of cultus he makes the prognosis that they will not perish, but will (and shall) constantly develop more highly. He holds that it will always remain

a necessity to give to the altogether prosaic and material structure of life, so easily lost in the daily run of duty, a higher and loftier aim, and that preacher will always have a thankful task who knows how to communicate to his hearers a vivid appreciation and feeling for the mysterious, in which the origin and the meaning of the universe are enveloped. It is even to be surmised that the musical expression of the feeling which clings to this consciousness will not only have continued life, but will also show itself capable of further development. "Meanwhile, sympathy commands silence towards all, who, suffering under the ills of life, derive comfort from their creed." Many of Spencer's liberal friends were startled over this approach to the believer's point of view, just as those of Kant were when he published his "Religion within the limits of Pure Reason." However, neither Spencer nor Kant have ever given room to the illusion that the " Great Enigma " has ever been touched in its innermost essence by even the most extensive scientific inquiry.

Spencer is and will remain an attractive as well as an eminent personality. His profound sincerity, his rugged honesty and his ceaseless energy are distinctly stamped upon his countenance and deeply interwoven with his whole charProud in his simplicity, independent and yet a great friend of man, without the distinction of high office yet with sublime dignity Spencer walked the pathway of life with the sure step of a monarch and the firm faith of a saint.

acter.

II.

THE REFORMATION CONTINUED.

REV. EDWARD S. BROMER.

The great Reformation of the sixteenth century was both a protest and an affirmation-a protest against the barriers in the way of the Gospel, an affirmation of its inner life and principles. The accusation that the Reformation was merely negative soon found expression in the name given its adherents when they were first called Protestants, soon after the protest of the Lutheran princes and cities against the decrees of the Diet of Spires. The great protest, however, could exist only because of the positive affirmations of the Gospel realized in the warm experience of the Reformers and their followers. These affirmations were not a new gospel, but as Principal A. M. Fairbairn says: "Taking the Reformation simply by itself, we find it was an attempt to recover the lost or forgotten ideal of the Christian religion, an attempt to return to the real and genuine religion of Christ." Looking forward from the time of the Reformation to the present; Professor A. Harnack says: "As regards the kernel of the matter, no new phase in the history of religion has occurred since the Reformation." Evidently its real inwardness lies in its point of view rather than in its resulting dogmas or institutions.

The subject, "The Reformation Continued," carries with it at once the implication that it was incomplete, or that it rose to the height of the freedom of the Gospel and then relapsed into the bondage of the letter and the institution. Both are true. As the Reformation was a result both of a historic development and a revolution, a return to original fountains, so likewise may our present-day conditions in the Church be characterized not only as the result of the historic continuity