portant for us, especially those dealing with the natural laws which regulate political and moral phenomena.

We do not enter into the question suggested by the somewhat obscure pronouncement of Renan, that "God is the category of the ideal,” a ground on which some might rest the necessity of preserving Theistic belief. For it is obvious that God cannot supply the human ideal. A being supposed to transcend immensely our conceptions, and to exist under conditions—if any—either unintelligible to us, or utterly different from those to which men are subject, can never furnish an imitable type for them. The recognition of this is implied, when the last and best of the decadent religions. humanises its God, and presents to us, not the divine, but a supposed perfect human character, as the model for our imitation.

Similar observations apply to the Future Life, as conceived in Theologism. Such a life is entirely incapable of proof, and we can make no affirmation or negation respecting it. The Positive, as distinguished from the Theological doctrine on the subject, is a statement of undeniable facts. Every servant of Humanity has two successive lives -one objective and temporary, in which his direct work is done, the other subjective, a life in the minds and hearts of others, where he works indirectly but permanently, the result of his labours and example being eternally preserved in the sum

of things, though his name may be forgotten. This is the true immortality, consisting in the perpetuity of service, not in personal survival.

But, it may be said, must not the mere possibility of a personal future life, or any, the smallest, ground for regarding its probability as preponderating in the scales of judgment, have a potent effect in determining our conduct? To suppose

this would contradict all we know of human nature, which is little influenced by expectation of remote and dubious consequences. Now that Science has thoroughly undermined theological doctrines, resolutions overmastering our selfish instincts and directing our whole behaviour, often in trying circumstances, cannot be inspired by such vague and uncertain bases of belief. They must in future be dictated by profound convictions, resting on rational study of the demonstrable results of different systems of conduct-those convictions operating chiefly on the altruistic affections which Theology and Metaphysics have often denied, but which Science has proved to be amongst the real elements of our nature.

VII.

Ο

MATERIALISM.

NE of the most important views presented by Comte relates to the nature of what is called Materialism. It is often regarded as consisting in a particular opinion as to the intimate essence respectively of matter and mind-a subject quite inaccessible to our researches. Its true significance appears on an examination, from a special point of view, of the Encyclopedic Scale. Each science in that scale borrows conclusions from the preceding and simpler sciences. But each also requires independent inductions of its own, which give it its individual character. Now Materialism consists in denying or overlooking the latter fact, and attempting to construct one of those sciences exclusively from the materials supplied by its predecessors. This vicious procedure may take place in relation to any science after the first in the series. It is Materialism to attempt-ignoring the fundamental dualism of Inorganic and Organic bodies-to seek to explain the facts of life from Cosmological laws

alone. Especially is this true when the attempt is made with relation to the phenomena of Cerebral life. It is Materialism, again, to represent the science of society as a mere corollary of Biology, neglecting the historic inductions on which it is chiefly founded. So is it also to reduce Morals to Sociology, overlooking the laws of personal unity— of the internal harmony of the individual. The general tendency of these errors is to compromise the originality and dignity of the higher fields of research and to degrade them to the level of the lower. The radical vice is everywhere the same, and it extends even to the internal repartition of each science, which, when rightly framed, is regulated by the same principles as the arrangement of the fundamental members of the Hierarchy-namely, the diminution of generality and the increase of complexity of the corresponding phenomena.

It is in relation to the noblest speculations that this tendency is most dangerous, and has been felt by the public instinct to be so. It would, indeed, be unjust to impute to those who have fallen into this error a moral culpability, or to suppose that their principles of conduct are necessarily perverted by it. On the contrary, the mode of thinking here described, by being associated with the insurrection against the oppressive domination of Theologism, has been in many instances invested with a progressive character, and has been allied with generous inspirations. Still, it is undeniably true

that, especially since Negativism has ceased to be an instrument of progress, the mental tendency here characterised has usually the effect of deadening the finer feelings and creating an habitual depreciation of the affective as compared with the intellectual life, the latter being regarded as more explicable by the materialistic hypothesis. Historically, an opposition has been offered to it by Spiritualism, which is, however, no less irrational. But now an adequate barrier against it is erected by the Encyclopedic Hierarchy, which gives the due weight in methodology, on the one hand, to deduction from earlier sciences, and on the other, to the original inductions belonging to each successive stage in the order of research; and which represents the final science as presiding over the whole system and repressing the effort at invasion of the lower elements into the higher domain.