seems to be derived from emotional or sentimental causesill-regulated passions, excesses of various kinds, listlessness and ennui, dissatisfaction with existence, and a consequent distrust of its teachings, apparently for no better reason than that it exists; such a state, e.g. as was represented by Werther and Wertherism in Germany, and in France by such writers as Alfred de Musset, Lamartine, &c.

TREVOR. The omission was purposely made. I fully acknowledge that the kind of Skepticism you speak of exercised a most potent and unhealthy influence in Germany, France, and England at the close of the last and commencement of the present century. Traces of it may, I have no doubt, be found in each of those countries, especially in the two former. But, to tell you the truth, I did not think it deserving a place by the side of intellectual causes. That there are puzzles in the universe which the human intellect cannot solve is an intelligible proposition, and it is one compatible with the noblest and most untiring search after truth; but that men worthy of the name should, in an access of petty childish passion, oppose themselves to the obvious laws and experience of the world, seems precisely like the act of a petulant child who beats the inanimate object that has hurt it. I should, therefore, draw a distinct line of demarcation between intellectual and sentimental Skeptics, and should refuse to consider the latter as worthy of our attention. The Abbé de Baunard, in his tolerant and sympathetic work, Les Victimes du Doute,' has made a division between Skeptics in philosophy and poetry, or between those of thought and of life. Our own proposed distinction between intellectual and sentimental Skeptics seems to me preferable; though so intimate is the cohesion between the reason and the feelings that we shall find it impossible always to eliminate the latter as secondary agencies in the production of Skepticism.

MISS LEYCESTER. It is a remarkable instance of Goethe's versatility, that the two creations which in modern times best typify the emotional and intellectual Skeptic, Werther and Faust, are his.

HARRINGTON. As to Faust, let Goethe have all the glory

you can lavish on him. He is the eternal type of the eager, curious questioner and doubter. But, with regard to the creation of Werther, I agree with Trevor, and with a much greater thinker than either of us-I mean Lessing-it is almost beneath contempt. He is the most despicable being that ever a gigantic genius set itself to excogitate. The only satisfactory part of his maudlin career is his suicide, of which I should say that no act of his life became him like leaving it. Existence has surely trials enough, even for wise men, without adding to them the imaginary sorrows, the mawkish sentimentality, of brainless fools.

MISS LEYCESTER. I cannot say I have the least respect for Werther; still I think you are too severe on him and the class he represents. Even allowing that his mental distractions, his antagonism to human experience and social laws, were caused by disordered passions, yet the passions as much as the intellect form part of a man, and certainly are not inferior to it as incentives to action as well as to belief. A conspectus of human motives to thought and action which should altogether omit the passions would seem, therefore, to be partial and inadequate. Besides, we must not forget the numberless beauties which Werther' contains, independently

of its plot-interest.

TREVOR. Mere accessories, Miss Leycester, of an unworthy and repellent subject. It would have been impossible for a man like Goethe to have treated any subject without leaving on it the marks of his own creative and artistic genius. As Stella said of Swift, He could have written beautifully about a broomstick;' but in the case of Werther these embellishments are like an elaborate flower decoration of a ghastly corpse. No matter how skilfully it is effected, nothing can disguise the livid pallor of death, or conceal the incipient traces of corruption.

ARUNDEL. I doubt whether Goethe intended Werther to be regarded as a type or victim of Skepticism; at least the creation on his part of a separate personage to represent the restlessness which comes of human passion is altogether unnecessary, for Faust represents, not only intellectual unbelief, but also the unrest begotten of passion and desire as

well. It is, in my humble opinion, a mark of Goethe's genius -of the full all-roundedness of his character-that he should have united the intellectual and emotional disquiet in a single personality, instead of making Faust an intellectual machine without body, parts, or passions.

TREVOR. Though I know that in doing so I shall avow myself a heretic, I entirely dissent from your view of Faust as a perfect artistic representation of intellectual unbelief. There is too much alloy of human passion in his composition. I am quite unable to conceive that a man of his mental power, independence, and knowledge should have surrendered himself to sensuous enjoyments as an escape from the puzzles of existence.

MISS LEYCESTER. What, Faust without Gretschen! Oh, Dr. Trevor !

TREVOR. I am fully aware of the prejudices my proposition must encounter; still, my ideal of the intellectual inquirer pure and simple is precisely 'Faust without Gretschen.' I know what will be urged as to the loss of human interest, but that I consider as an imperfection to be alleged only by those who regard it exclusively from a dramatic point of view. That is not altogether the position from which I contemplate it. I ask myself what would be the probable action of an intellectual inquirer who was bending all his energies to solve the problems of the universe, or to discover truth; and I conceive it à priori improbable that he would be content to abandon the intellectual search, and to try to find his pearl-bearing oyster by a hasty and ill-considered plunge into the wild sea of human passion. My own ideal of intellectual Skepticism is the Prometheus of Aischylos, or, for that matter, the reproduction of it by Goethe. There we have research and inquiry for its own sake, uncontaminated with baser motives. Moreover, in the Skeptical drama of 'Hamlet,' where the attention of the hero is absorbed by the pros and cons of a difficult duty, the love-interest is distinctly subordinated, even if it can be said to have any real existence.

MRS. HARRINGTON. I think you have overlooked a fact which serves to show that Goethe himself could not have set

great store on the passion episode of Faustus, for we must remember that it is Mephistophiles that introduces him to Gretschen.

TREVOR. Faust's passion, though forming no part of the original legend, is more than an episode; it is the plot of Goethe's drama. No doubt Mephistophiles inveigled him; but my contention is that the allurement, besides being diabolically suggested, is incongruous, for it is physical, not intellectual; and, given a thinker who had penetrated so fully into the problems of existence and the nature of their only conceivable solution, it is extremely improbable that he should have been taken by such a bait. As Coleridge said on this very point, 'Between sensuality and thirst after knowledge there is no connection.' I don't mean to say that intellectual Samsons have not oftentimes met with their Delilahs, and been shorn of their strength, but not when they have been of the exalted type of Faustus. As an illustration of the incongruity, conceive, e.g. Aischylos making Prometheus submit himself to the tyrant of Olympus for the sake of the love of one of the sympathetic daughters of Ocean! or imagine Shakespeare allowing Hamlet to forego his high emprise, and permitting the 'native hue' of his 'resolution' to be blenched, not by the inherent difficulties of his position, but by the charms of Ophelia !

ARUNDEL. Your argument, Doctor, is characteristic of an inveterate old bachelor like yourself.

TREVOR. As to that, I do not wish to impugn the wisdom of married people generally; but I should certainly distrust the wisdom, if not the sanity, of the professed searcher after truth who sought to find in marriage an adequate solution of the puzzles of the universe. Hymen is doubtless represented as a lamp-bearer, but I never heard the most deliriously enthusiastic of his votaries ever affirm that his torch is identical with the lamp of truth and knowledge.

The marriage of Prometheus with Hesione, though incidentally mentioned by Aischylos, forms no part of the older myth. Comp. Welcker, Die Aesch. Tril. p. 12.

ARUNDEL. But Aischylos had a semi-divine Titan for his hero-Goethe only aimed at creating a man. Take the case of Abélard; does not the romance of his life enhance our interest in him as a thinker?

TREVOR. No doubt Abélard is an actual example of the delineation which Goethe employs in Faust; a man in whom the passion interest is on a level with the intellectual, though I am not aware that even he ever regarded Héloïse as a complete answer to his intellectual difficulties and doubts; but, observe, he stands alone in the history of philosophers. We shall have ample proofs, in the Skeptics on our proposed list, of the preponderance of intellectual over sentimental or passion interests, and so far a justification of our resolution to confine ourselves to the former, and eschew the latter as too unimportant for consideration.

ARUNDEL. In other words, we must divest ourselves of humanity, and attire ourselves as high priests of philosophy. Well, I am quite willing-as a temporary experiment.

HARRINGTON. Another reason why we should limit ourselves mainly to intellectual causes of Skepticism is, that sentimental causes are not susceptible of discussion, which implies and demands reasoning. Besides which, they are merely personal. Hence I quite approve of Trevor's ideal of the true intellectual Skeptic, as Faust without Gretschen, Abélard without Héloïse, and Hamlet who, in the interests of a higher pursuit, has buried his love in the grave of Ophelia.

After a short silence, which none of the party seemed disposed to break, Harrington said: 'Well, as we seem to have discussed sufficiently the main points of Dr. Trevor's Essay, I propose we retire to the drawing-room, and, as an appropriate recreation after the dissonance which naturally pertains to Skepticism and discussion thereupon, solace ourselves with musical harmony-and tea.'

Before the party broke up, it was arranged that the next meeting of the friends should take place at Hilderton Hall, on which occasion Dr. Trevor promised to read the first of