it out to its logical conclusion, is a definite system of metaphysical negation which goes under the various names of Naturalism, Positivism, Empiricism, and Agnosticism. Its result in the minds of those who accept it is the development of a sceptical temper. Its result in the minds of those who are unconsciously affected by it, through those profound instincts of sympathy and involuntary imitation which influence all men, is an attitude, more or less sincere, more or less consistent and continuous, -an attitude of doubt.

The spirit of the age tacitly divides all the various beliefs which are held among men into two classes. Those which are supported by scientific proof must be accepted. Those which are not thus supported either must be rejected, or may safely and properly be disregarded.

III

Now this general scepticism, in all its shades and degrees, is reflected in current literature. Never was literary art more versatile and successful than in the present age. Never have its laws been more widely understood and its fascinations more potently exercised. Never has it evoked more magical and charming forms to float above an abyss of nothingness.

In the lay sermons and essays of Huxley and Tyndall and Frederic Harrison and W. K. Clifford, scepticism appears militant and trenchant. These knights-errant of Doubting Castle are brilliantly equipped as men of war; and even when they fall foul of each other, as they often do, the ground of the conflict is an accusation of infidelity to the principles of unbelief, and its object is to drive the adversary back into a more complete and consistent negation.

In the vivid and picturesque historical studies of Renan and Froude, scepticism is at once ironical and idealistic, destructive and dogmatic. In the penetrative and intelligent critiques of Scherer and Morley, it adheres with proud but illogical persistence to the ethical consequences of the faith with which logic has broken: like a son disinherited, but resolved to maintain the right of possession by the strong

arm.

In the novels of unflinching and unblushing naturalism,—like those of Zola and Maupassant and the later works of Thomas Hardy, scepticism speaks with a harsh and menacing accent of the emptiness of all life and the futility of all endeavour. In the psychological romances of Flaubert and Bourget and Spielhagen, George Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward, it holds the

mirror up to human nature to disclose a face darkened with inconsolable regret for lost dreams. Far apart as Madame Bovary and Cosmopolis, Problematische Naturen and Middlemarch and Robert Elsmere may be in many of their features, do they not wear the same expression,-the melancholy of disillusion?

Fiction in its more superficial form, dealing only with the manners and customs of the social drama, and relying for its interest mainly upon local colour and the charm of incident narrated with vivacity and grace, betrays its scepticism by a serene, unconscious disregard of the part which religion plays in real life. In how many of the lighter novels of the day do we find any recognition, even between the lines, of the influence which the idea of God or its absence, the practice of prayer or its neglect, actually exercise upon the character and conduct of men? Take, for example, Du Maurier's Trilby, as the type of a clever book carelessly written for the public of a passing moment. It is incredibly credulous in regard to the dramatic possibilities of hypnotism. It is pitifully inadequate in its conception of the actual potencies of religion; and it uses Christianity chiefly as a subject for caricature.

Poetry has always been the most direct and

intimate utterance of the human heart. And it is in poetry that we hear to-day the voice of scepticism most clearly, "making abundant music around an elementary nihilism, now stripped naked." Listen to its sonorous chantings as they come from France in the verse of Leconte de Lisle, celebrating the sombre ritual of human automata before the altar of the unknown and almighty tyrant, who agitates them endlessly for his own amusement. Listen to its delicate and decadent lyrics, as Charles Baudelaire sings his defeat in life and his thirst for annihilation.

"Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte,
L'Espoir dont l'éperon attisait ton ardeur

Ne veut plus t'enfourcher. Couche-toi sans pudeur,
Vieux cheval dont le pied à chaque obstacle butte.

Résigne-toi, mon cœur, dors ton sommeil de brute.

Et le Temps m'engloutit minute par minute
Comme la neige immense un corps pris de roideur:
Je contemple d'en haut le globe en sa rondeur
Et je n'y cherche plus l'abri d'une cahute!

Avalanche, veux tu m'emporter dans ta chute?"

Turn to England and hear its musical confession in the cool, sad tones of Matthew

Arnold, no enemy of faith, but her disenchanted lover.

"Forgive me, masters of the mind,
At whose behest I long ago

So much unlearned, so much resigned—
I come not here to be your foe;
I seek these anchorites not in ruth,
To curse and to deny your truth;

Not as their friend, or child, I speak
But as on some far northern strand,
Thinking of his own gods, a Greek,
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Before a fallen Runic stone,-

For both were faiths, and both are gone."

There is a poem by Tennyson (who never broke with faith, though he felt the strain of doubt), in which he describes with intense dramatic sympathy the finality of scepticism in the human soul. It is called "Despair." There is another poem, called "Sea Dreams," in which he gives a vision of the rising tide of doubt as it threatens to undermine and overwhelm the beliefs of the past. The woman is telling her husband the dream which came to her in the night as she watched by their sick child.

"But round the North, a light,

A belt, it seem'd, of luminous vapour, lay,