The North American Review

commandments (the word is irritating) we should certainly leave out the fourth, requiring us to remember (we should rather seek to forget) the Sabbath to keep it holy (that is in attending preaching conventicles); though of course health and convenience will persuade us to adopt practical means for giving leisure to the working classes and to all men, amusements being provided. Happily, the great men who are doing most to widen the boundaries of science are also seeking to remove the restrictions to Sabbath freedom. Huxley and Tyndall, by their lectures, have struck a blow at the Puritan Sabbath from which it will never recover, though it may continue to kick and groan till it breathes its last. By the removal of such restrictions, the number of supposed sins will be much diminished and painful reproaches become few and slight.

Fifth. In regard to the marriage relation, our leaders have not spoken out with their usual clearness. It looks as if they were afraid. Those who follow them will not be. It is evident that they all approve of some modification of the Biblical law, and have hinted that it ought to be changed. What they have not codified they have recommended by their example. Goethe lived a considerable portion of his life with his housekeeper as if she were his wife. Comte, founder of positivism, the immediate predecessor of agnosticism, had a rapt admiration of Clotilde, his wife being still alive. John Mill made love to the druggist's wife while her husband was living. Miss Evans lived with Mr. Lewes while his wife was not dead. I observe with interest that portions of the religious (so called) press are speaking of this lady as having very pious instincts, and dying with Thomas à Kempis near her bed, and a defense of Spinoza not far off. These are the signs and precursors of what is coming, the streaks of light that forecast the dawn. The wide license given to divorce in a number of the American States, and the thousands of women in each of our great cities ready to welcome all who call, clearly indicates that there must be some regulated system of liberty. But the time has not yet just come for speaking out on this subject.

At times I heave a sigh because the old moral truths are dissolving one by one. But I confess I do not feel so much in parting with the cold and musty morality as with the warm religious truths. Professor Goldwin Smith, who, though a bright writer, has never got adjusted into his proper place (dis

contented with his own Oxford, and America not contented with him), thinks we are living in a moral interregnum. Such interregna are dangerous, as the old kingdom is gone and the new republic has not got its authority recognized. No one feels this more than Herbert Spencer. "Few things," he says, "can happen more disastrous than the decay and death of a regulative system no longer fit before another and fitter regula tive system has grown up to replace it." I know how foolish it is to move out of a house that has sheltered us till another has been provided. But our masters have told all men that the old house is unstable, the rotten ship is sinking, and it is only common prudence to escape, in the hope of meeting, in the broad ocean on which we are cast, some vessel to take us in. I confess I see no such vessel near me, though I know that there is a grand land at a distance. In the year 1744, Hume was a candidate for the chair of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh University, but did not get the appointment, as people at that stage did not see what morals he could teach their young men in consistency with his system of nescience and atheism. He had, in consequence, no opportunity of constructing a positive system of ethics; and no one since his day has taken up the work. The college in which I was educated did not supply this want, and some of us have had to suffer all the evils of the interregnum. Our president opposed the new light coming in upon us. A professor gave us Spencer's political science, but did not take up the morality which ought to underlie and bear up all social laws. I have given my reasons for not being satisfied with Spencer's structure, which has no foundation to rest on till long ages have passed, and leaves a thousand practical questions unanswered. We are arrived at the same stage in morals as we were a few years ago in religion. Just as the evolutionist a few years ago placed in this journal "An Advertisement for a New Religion," so do I now formally insert An Advertisement for a New Morality.

A NEW-LIGHT MORALIST.

THE

NORTH AMERICAN

REVIEW.

JUNE, 1881.

No. 295.

Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur.

NEW YORK:

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

ALLEN THORNDIKE RICE.

1881.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.