ditions; objective facts outside of us or the revived impression of such facts; the molecular effect of these facts upon certain parts of our organism, the association of these with similar facts recalled by memory, an elaborate mechanism to correlate these impressions, an unknown to be made known, and a difficulty to be overcome. All systematic thought implies relations with the external world present or recalled, and it also implies some shortcoming in our powers of perfecting those relations. When we meditate, it is on a basis of facts which we are observing, or have observed and are now recalling, and with a view to get at some result which baffles our direct observation and hinders some practical purpose.

The same holds good of our moral energy. Ecstasy and mere adoration exclude energy of action. Moral development implies difficulties to be overcome, qualities balanced against one another under opposing conditions, this or that appetite tempted, this or that instinct tested by proof. Moral development does not grow like a fungus; it is a continual struggle in surrounding conditions of a specific kind, and an active putting forth of a variety of practical faculties in the midst of real obstacles.

So, too, of the affections, they equally imply conditions. Sympathy does not spurt up like a fountain in the air; it implies beings in need of help, evils to be alleviated, a fellowship of giving and taking, the sense of protecting and being protected, a pity for suffering, an admiration of power, goodness, and truth. All of these imply an external world to act in, human beings as objects, and human life under human conditions.

Now all these conditions are eliminated from the orthodox ideal of a future state. There are to be no physical im pressions, no material difficulties, no evil, no toil, no struggle, no human beings and no human objects. The only condition is a complete absence of all conditions, or all conditions of which we have any experience. And we say, we And we say, we cannot imagine what you mean by your intensified sympathy, your broader thought, your infinitely varied activity, when you begin by postulating the absence of all that makes sympathy, thought,

and activity possible, all that makes life really noble.

A mystical and inane ecstasy is an appropriate ideal for this paradise of negations, and this is the orthodox view; but it is not a high view. A glorified existence of greater activity and development may be a high view, but it is a contradiction in terms; exactly, I say, as if you were to talk of a higher civilisation without any human beings. But this is simply a metaphysical afterthought to escape from a moral dilemma. Mr. Hutton is surely mistaken in saying that Positivists have forgotten that Christians ever had any meaning in their hopes of a 'beatific vision.' He must know that Dante and Thomas à Kempis form the religious books of Positivists, and they are, with some other manuals of Catholic theology, amongst the small number of volumes which Comte recommended for constant use. We can see in the celestial' visions' of a mystical and unscientific age much that was beautiful in its time, though not the highest product even of theology. But in our day these visions of paradise have lost what moral value they had, whilst the progress of philosophy has made them incompatible with our modern canons of thought.

Mr. Hutton supposes me to object to any continuance of sensation as an evil in itself. My objection was not that consciousness should be prolonged in immortality, but that nothing else but consciousness should be prolonged. All real human life, energy, thought, and active affection, are to be made impossible in your celestial paradise, but you insist on retaining consciousness. To retain the power of feeling, whilst all means and object are taken away from thinking, all power of acting, all opportunity of cultivating the faculties of sympathy are stifled this seems to me something else than a good. It would seem to me, that simply to be conscious, and yet to lie thoughtless, inactive, irresponsive, with every faculty of a man paralysed within you, as if by that villanous drug which produces torpor whilst it intensifies sensation such a consciousness as this must be a very place of torment.

I think some contradictions which Mr. Hutton supposes he detects in my paper are not very hard to reconcile. I

admitted that Death is an evil, it seems; but I spoke of our posthumous activity as a higher kind of influence. We might imagine, of course, a Utopia with neither suffering, waste, nor loss; and compared with such a world, the world, as we know it, is full of evils, of which Death is obviously one. But relatively, in such a world as alone we know, Death becomes simply a law of organised nature, from which we draw some of our guiding motives of conduct. In precisely the same way the necessity of toil is an evil in itself; but, with man and his life as we know them, we draw from it some of our highest moral energies. The grandest qualities of human nature, such as we know it at least, would become for ever impossible, if Labor and Death were not the law of life.

Mr. Hutton again takes but a pessimist view of life when he insists how much of our activity is evil, and how questionable is the future of the race. I am no pessimist, and I believe in a providential control over all human actions by the great Power of Humanity, which indeed brings good out of evil, and assures, at least for some thousands of centuries, a certain progress towards the higher state. Pessimism as to the essential dignity of man and the steady development of his race, is one of the surest marks of the enervating influence of this dream of a celestial glory. If I called it as wild a desire as to go roving through space in a comet, it is because I can attach no meaning to a human life to be prolonged without a human frame and a human world; and it seems to me as rational to talk of becoming an angel as to talk of becoming an ellipse.

By duties' of the world beyond the grave, I meant the duties which are imposed on us in life, by the certainty that our action must continue to have an indefinite effect. The phrase may be inelegant, but I do not think the meaning is obscure.

II. I cannot agree with Lord Blachford that I have fallen into any confusion between a substance and an attribute. I am quite aware that the word Soul has been hitherto used for some centuries as an entity. And I proposed to retain the term for an attribute. It is a very common process in the history of thought. Electricity, Life, Heat, were

rea

With regard to the 'percipient' and the 'perceptible' I cannot follow Lord Blachford. He speaks a tongue that I do not understand. I have no means o dividing the universe into 'percipients and 'perceptibles.' I know no son why a 'percipient' should not be a 'perceptible,' none why I should not be perceptible,' and none why beings about me should not be 'perceptible.' I think we are all perfectly 'perceptible'-indeed some of us are more perceptible' than 'percipientthough I cannot say that Lord Blachford is always' perceptible' to me. And how does my being perceptible,' or not being 'perceptible,' prove that I have an immortal soul? Is a dog' perceptible,' is he 'percipient'? Has he not some of the qualities of a 'percipient,' and if so, has he an immortal soul? Is an ant, a tree, a bacterium, percipient, and has any of these an immortal soul; for I find Lord Blachford declaring there is an 'ineradicable difference between the motions of a material and the sensations of a living being,' as if the animal world. were percipient, and the inorganic perceptible? But surely in the sensations of a living being the animal world must be included. Where does the vegetable world come in?

I used the word 'organism' advisedly, when I said that will, thought, and affection, are functions of a living organism. I decline exactly to localise the organ of any function of mind or will. When I am asked, What are we? I reply we are men. When I am asked, Are we our bodies? I say no, nor are we our minds. Have we no sense of personality, of unity? I am asked. I say certainly; it is an acquired result of our nervous organisation, liable to be interrupted by derangements of that nervous organisation. What is it that makes us think and feel? The facts of our human nature; I cannot get behind this, and I need no fur

a trance.

Lord Blachford, who is somewhat punctilious in terms, asks me what I consider myself to understand 'by the incorporation of a consensus of faculties with a glorious future.' Well it so happens that I did not use that phrase. I have never spoken of an immortal Soul anywhere, nor do I use the word Soul of any but the living man. I said a man might look forward to incorporation with the future of his race, explaining that to mean his 'posthumous activity.' And I think at any rate the phrase is quite as reasonable as to say that I look forward, as Mr. Hutton does, to a 'union with God.' What does Mr. Hutton, or Lord Blachford, understand himself to mean by that?

Surely Lord Blachford's epigram about the fiddle and the tune is hardly fortunate. Indeed, that exactly expresses what I find faulty in the view of himself and the theologians. He thinks the tune will go on playing when the fiddle is broken up and burned. I say nothing of the kind. I do not say the man will continue to exist after death. I simply say that his influence will; that other men will do and think what he taught

them to do or to think. Just so, a general would be said to win a battle which he planned and directed, even if he had been killed in an early part of it. What is there of fiddle and tune about this? I certainly think that when Mozart and Beethoven have left us great pieces of music, it signifies little to art if the actual fiddle or even the actual composer continue to exist or not. I never said the tune would exist. I said that men would remember it and repeat it. I must thank Lord Blachford for a happy illustration of my own meaning. But it is he who expects the tune to exist without the fiddle. I say, you can't have a tune without a fiddle, nor a fiddle without wood.

III. I have reserved the criticism of Professor Huxley, because it lies apart from the principal discussion, and turns mainly on some incidental remarks of mine on biological reasoning about spiritual things.'

I note three points at the outset. Professor Huxley does not himself pretend to any evidence for a theological soul and future life. Again, he does not dispute the account I give of the functional relation of physical and moral facts. He seems surprised that I should understand it, not being a biologist; but he is kind enough to say that my statement may pass. Lastly, he does not deny the reality of man's posthumous activity. Now these three are the main purposes of my argument; and in these I have Professor Huxley with me. He is no more of a theologian than I am. Indeed, he is only scandalised that I should see any good in priests at all. He might have said more plainly that, when the man is dead, there is an end of the matter. this clearly is his opinion, and he intimates as much in his paper. Only he would say no more about it, bury the carcase, and end the tale, leaving all thoughts about the future to those whose faith is more robust and whose hopes are richer; by which I understand him to mean persons weak enough to listen to the priests.

But

Now this does not satisfy me. I call it materialism, for it exaggerates the importance of the physical facts, and ignores that of the spiritual facts. And the object of my paper was simply this: that as the physical facts are daily grow

ing quite irresistible, it is of urgent importance to place the spiritual facts on a sound scientific basis at once. Professor Huxley implies that his business is with the physical facts, and the spiritual facts must take care of themselves. I cannot agree with him. That is precisely the difference between us. The spiritual facts of man's nature are the business of all who undertake to denounce priestcraft, and especially of those who preach Lay Sermons.

Professor Huxley complains that I should join in the view-halloo against biological science. Now I never have supposed that biological science was in the position of the hunted fox. I thought it was the hunter, booted and spurred and riding over us all, with Professor Huxley leaping the most terrific gates and cracking his whip with intense gusto. As to biological science, it is the last thing that I should try to run down; and I must protest, with all sincerity, that I wrote without a thought of Professor Huxley at all. He insists on knowing, in the most peremptory way, of whom I was thinking, as if I were thinking of him. Of whom else could I be thinking, forsooth, when I spoke of Biology? Well! I did not bite my thumb at him, but I bit my thumb.

Seriously, I was not writing at Professor Huxley, or I should have named him. I have a very great admiration for his work in biology; I have, learned much from him; I have followed his courses of lectures years and years ago, and have carefully studied his books. If, in questions which belong to sociology, morals, and to general philosophy, he seems to me hardly an authority, why need we dispute? Dog should not bite dog; and he and I have many a wolf that we both would keep from the fold.

But if I did not mean Professor Huxley, whom did I mean? Now my pa per, I think clearly enough, alluded to two very different kinds of Materialism. There is systematic Materialism, and there is the vague Materialism. The eminent example of the first is the unlucky remark of Cabanis that the brain secretes thought, as the liver secretes bile; and there is much of the same sort in many foreign theories-in the tone of Moleschott, Buchner, and the like. The most distinct examples of

it in this country are found amongst phrenologists, spiritualists, some mental pathologists, and a few communist visionaries. The far wider, vaguer, and more dangerous school of Materialism is found in a multitude of quarters-in all those who insist exclusively on the physical side of moral phenomena-all, in short, who, to use Professor Huxley's phrase, are employed in 'building up a physical theory of moral phenomena.' Those who confuse moral and physical phenomena are indeed few. Those who exaggerate the physical side of moral phenomena are many.

Now, though I did not allude to Professor Huxley in what I wrote, his criticism convinces me that he is sometimes at least found among these last. His paper is an excellent illustration of the very error which I condemned. The issue between us is this :-We both agree that every mental and moral fact is in functional relation with some molecular fact. So far we are entirely on the same side, as against all forms of theological and metaphysical doctrine which conceive the possibility of human feeling without a human body. But then, says Professor Huxley, if I can trace the molecular facts which are the antecedents of the mental and moral facts, I have explained these mental and moral facts. That I deny; just as much as I should deny that a chemical analysis of the body could ever lead to an explanation of the physical organism. Then, says the Professor, when I have traced out the molecular facts, I have built up a physical theory of moral phenomena. That again I deny. I say there is no such thing, or no rational thing, that can be called a physical theory of moral phenomena; any more than there is a moral theory of physical phenomena. What sort of a thing would be a physical theory of history-history explained by the influence of climate or the like? The issue between us centres in this. I say that the physical side of moral phenomena bears about the same part in the moral sciences that the facts about climate bear in the sum of human civilisation. And, that to look to the physical facts as an explanation of the moral, or even as an independent branch of the study of moral facts, is perfectly idle; just as it would be if a mere physical

geographer pretended to give us, out of his geography, a climatic philosophy of history. Yet Professor Huxley has not been deterred from the astounding paradox of proposing to us a physiological theory of religion. He tells us how the religious feelings may be brought within the range of physiological inquiry.' And he proposes as a problem-' What diseased viscus may have been responsible for the "Priest in Absolution"?' I will drop all epithets; but I must say that I call that materialism, and materialism not very nice of its kind. One might as reasonably propose as a problem-What barometrical readings are responsible for the British Constitution? and suggest a congress of meteorologists to do the work of Hallam, Stubbs, and Freeman. No doubt there is some connection between the House of Commons and the English climate, and so there is no doubt some connection between religious theories and physical organs. But to talk of bringing religion within the range of physiological inquiry' is simply to stare through the wrong end of the telescope, and to turn philosophy and science upside down. Ah! Professor Huxley, this is a bad day's work for scientific progress

ή κεν γηθήσαι Πρίαμος, Πριάμοιό τε παῖδες. Pope Pius and his people will be glad when they read that fatal sentence of yours. When I complained of 'the attempt to dispose [of the deepest moral truths of human nature on a bare physical or physiological basis,' I could not have expected to read such an illustration of my meaning by Professor Huxley.

Perhaps he will permit me to inform him (since that is the style which he affects) that there once was-and indeed we may say still is an institution called the Catholic Church; that it has had a long and strange history, and subtle influences of all kinds; and I venture to think that Professor Huxley may learn more about the Priest in Absolution by a few weeks' study of the Catholic system than by inspecting the diseased viscera of the whole human race. When Professor Huxley's historical and religious studies have advanced so far as to enable him to explain' the history of Catholicism, I think he will admit that 'Priest

craft' cannot well be made a chapter in a physiological manual. It may be cheap pulpit thunder, but this idea of his of inspecting a 'diseased viscus' cisely what I meant by 'biological reasoning about spiritual things.' And I stand by it, that it is just as false in science as it is deleterious in morals. It is an attempt (I will not say arrogant, I am inclined to use another epithet) to explain, by physical observations, what can only be explained by the most subtle moral, sociological, and historical observations. It is to think you can find the golden eggs by cutting up the goose, instead of watching the goose to see where she lays the eggs.

I ain quite aware that Professor Huxley has elsewhere formulated his belief that Biology is the science which 'includes man and all his ways and works.' If history, law, politics, morals, and political economy, are merely branches of biology, we shall want new dictionaries indeed; and biology will embrace about four fifths of human knowledge. But this is not a question of language; for we here have Professor Huxley actually bringing religion within the range of physiological inquiry, and settling its problems by references to 'diseased viscus.' But the differences between us are a long story; and since Professor Huxley has sought me out, and in somewhat monitorial tone has proposed to set me right, I will take an early occasion to try and set forth what I find paradoxical in his notions of the relations of Biology and Philosophy.

I note a few special points between us, and I have done. Professor Huxley is so well satisfied with his idea of a ' physical theory of moral phenomena,' that he constantly attributes that sense to my words, though I carefully guarded my language from such a construction. Thus he quotes from me a passage beginning, Man is one, however compound,' but he breaks off the quotation just as I go on to speak of the direct analysis of mental and moral faculties by mental and moral science, not by physiological science. I say: 'philosophy and science' have accomplished explanations; I do not say biology; and the biological part of the explanation is a small and subordinate part of the whole. I do not say that the correspondence between