unrefined? The answer to such carping criticism, if anybody were foolish enough seriously to offer it, is simple, intelligible, irresistible: it is the map of Europe as Napoleon found it, and the map of Europe as Napoleon left it.

But whence came this new power into the world? Are we to be seriously asked to believe that it was a stage in a process of natural evolution? How can that be a stage in a process of natural evolution which violently arrests the process? We know what evolution was actually doing for the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, at that very time. The evolution was all downwards, a process of corruption. But I am arguing here only with those who admit the primary assumption of "an intelligent Author of Nature, with a character and a will." For the rest-those who repudiate that assumption-I may say, in the words of Newman: "I cannot convert men, when I ask for assumptions which they refuse to grant to me; and without assumptions no one can prove anything about anything." And, again, he says-after quoting Aristotle and the Bible (Grammar of Assent, pp. 415416):

Relying, then, on these authorities, human and divine, I have no scruple in beginning the review I shall take of Christianity by professing to consult for those only whose minds are properly prepared for it; and by being prepared I mean those who are imbued with the religious opinions and sentiments which I have identified with Natural Religion. I do not address myself to those who, in moral evil and physical, see nothing more than imperfections of a parallel nature, who consider that the difference in gravity between the two is one of degree only, not of kind; that moral evil is merely the offspring of physical, and that as we remove the latter so we inevitably remove the former ;

that there is a progress of the race which tends to the annihilation of moral evil; that sin is a bugbear, not a reality; that the Creator does not punish, except in the sense of correcting; that vengeance in Him would of necessity be vindictiveness; that all that we know of Him, be it much or little, is through the laws of Nature; that miracles are impossible; that prayer to Him is a superstition; that the fear of Him is unmanly; that sorrow for sin is slavish and abject; that the only intelligible worship of Him is to act well our part in the world, and the only sensible repentance to do better in future; that if we do our duties in this life, we may take our chance for the next; and that it is of no use perplexing our minds about the future state, for it is all a matter of guess. These opinions characterize a civilized age; and if I say that I will not argue about Christianity with men who hold them, I do so, not as claiming any right to be impatient or peremptory with any one, but because it is plainly absurd to attempt to prove a second proposition to those who do not admit the first.

REMARKS ON DR. MAUDSLEY'S "NATURAL

CAUSES AND SUPERNATURAL

SEEMINGS."

Dr. Maudsley's treatment of religion-he does not deign to notice that the Christian religion differs essentially from witchcraft and omens and the like-is so arrogant and indecent, that I freely admit that it is more than possible that I am unfavorably prejudiced against his opinions in general. But I think I can, without bias, examine some of his theories which do not strictly belong either to science or religion; and, of course, for that particular purpose it is not in the least necessary that I should be myself a scientist-which I am not. If a man says "Yes is no," I need not ask what the "yes" is, or what the "no"; I know that the proposition is self-contradictory, whatever its terms may be. When Dr. Maudsley now and then condescends to come down from his high throne of scientific infallibility and discuss, for instance, such questions as belief—even with ignorant people who never knew that belief was a molecular movement in the substance of the brainI think anybody who is in the habit of carefully inspecting the operations of his own mind is competent to criticise him. Here, then, is his account of the purely intellectual act or process which we call belief (p. 17):

It is with beliefs as it is with movements, the right belief, like the right movement, being that which has been acquired

by the suitable adaptation to former like circumstances, and now fits with most exactness present circumstances; true, therefore, if they are essentially like, untrue if they are unlike. To ask a person to believe otherwise than according to his uniform experience, is like asking a skilful purposive movement which has been acquired with great pains, by special training, to adapt itself suddenly to the accomplishment of something quite different; and to ask him not to apply old beliefs to the apprehension of new facts, is like asking a man not to use for the grasping of a new object the most fit movements which he is capable of, because they are not entirely fit. He must use the old motor apprehension or grasp until he has fitted himself with a new one, which he gains by gradual adaptation. So it is with beliefs: he cannot choose but make use of the old belief, though it does not fit exactly; but in doing so he ought to take great care to see exactly wherein it does not fit, and proceed to modify it accordingly. Does it err by falling short of, or by being in excess of, the facts? And is it necessary to add to it or to take from it, or otherwise to modify it?

Here Dr. Maudsley asserts that belief is acquired like dexterous muscular movements. For instance, somebody tells me that John Smith has shot himself, and is dead. I go to his house, see his dead body, and hear the story of the circumstances of his death. Dr. Maudsley seems to affirm that, in such a case, I have to practise believing, like learning to play on the piano. John Smith's suicide is a new experience. I can only get hold of that experience by "making use of the old belief" that John Smith is still alive; and by pounding away at that belief, and by "fitting to it" the new experience, I shall gradually come to be sure that John Smith is not alive at all, but shot himself through the heart.

But nothing can be more remote from personal experience that is to say, what we are conscious of in

the act of believing-than this theory of belief, and in such a matter personal experience is the ultimate and only test of the truth of the theory. Whately says, giving an example of a proposition, that "naturalists have observed that 'animals having horns on the head are universally ruminant."" Otherwise-"All horned animals are ruminant." I do not know whether this proposition is true or not; but, in either case, it will serve equally well as a proposition by which to test Dr. Maudsley's theory of belief-which is, that belief is acquired, like muscular dexterity, by repeated efforts. Before belief of Whately's proposition is so much as possible, the person who considers it must know the meaning of its terms, "horned" and "ruminant." He must know the effect of the predication-viz.: that every horned animal is to be found among the class of animals that ruminate. Whether this be true or not, he must decide either by personal observation, or by testimony, or by both. When he has ascertained its truth, he immediately and perfectly believes it. He does not acquire his belief by believing over and over again, as a man acquires the muscular dexterity of playing on the piano by continual practice.

Take another example (p. 33):

To every one a thing is neither more nor less than what he thinks it-in effect, a think; and to think a new thing he must first use the old thought. How can he do otherwise before new experience has enabled him to organize a new think? The old thing or think represents object plus subject. The thing, therefore, is no thing to him until it is asselfed in a think, for until then it is object minus subject. And this is true also of all the properties and relations of the object. If he tells or foretells anything of it or of them, he must do it in terms of the language which he knows, obviously cannot do it in terms