firm of coal exporters in Hamburg to a Norwegian firm, hitherto customers of a Scottish colliery :—

'We are glad to see that you are willing to set about the introduction of German coal in your market.'

Commenting on this, the Norwegian firm write to their old Scottish suppliers :

'We regret to learn the strike continues. If this sort of thing is to go on, German and French coal will come to be preferred... Consumers in this country are daily being more and more convinced that it is nowadays impossible to depend on fulfilment of contracts with England.'

Writing under date October 13, a correspondent of the 'Scotsman' draws attention to figures in the Leith Dock accounts. In September 1893, 63,008 tons of coal were exported; in September 1894, 12,267 tons were exported, a decrease of 50,741 tons in one month; further, the dock revenue derived from imported coal for the months July, August, and September rose from 77. 14s. 11d. in 1893 to 3251. 7s. 3d, in 1894. Another letter, dated September 22, 1894, from a German port, runs as follows:

...

The strike will be ended now, I suppose, and we may again think of doing business together. . . . There was plenty of Silesian coal, and lately some large steamer cargoes of West Hartley Main steam arrived from Newcastle as an equivalent for Scottish. . . . Consequently only small quantities will be taken from your country and only if they are cheap, very cheap, as Newcastle coals .. be had at a cheap rate.'

can

Sir Donald Currie ('Scotsman,' October 3, 1894) at the launching of the Arundel Castle' expressed an opinion that the Scottish miners would not easily recover the markets which they relinquished during the strike:—

'To have been out on strike for, roughly speaking, fifteen weeks, would, he calculated, cost them so much that it would take them eight years of continual employment to make up at a shilling per week what they had lost in the struggle.'

Mr. John Wilson, of Broxburn, a leader of the miners, is thus reported in the 'Scotsman' of September 25, 1894 :—

'They met that night,' he said, 'to close the thirteenth week of this great national strike. They had each lost 15l. or 167. in wages, collectively they had lost 1,120,000l. in money, and the loss to the nation was about 7,000,000, in money.'

Yet,

Yet, all this notwithstanding, and although they have gained absolutely nothing by the strike, the miners continued, and will in all probability continue, their allegiance to their leaders. Much as we could wish that their leaders were better advised, there is a dumb pathetic fidelity in the relations of these men which compels our sympathy and respect. Nor, as we are glad to recognize, is this honourable confidence confined to one side. At a meeting reported in the Scotsman' of the 22nd September, 1894, it was stated that Mr. Weir, the leader of the Fife miners and the representative of the British Federation party in Scotland, had not received a single penny for his labours from the Fife miners since the beginning of the strike. The theory that the Trade Unionist leaders are all self-seeking knaves is unfortunately quite untrue. The intellect' of the party which sits apart and fares sumptuously is rarely dangerous. The honest, misguided fanatic who shares privations with his rank and file is most to be feared, but, intellectually at all events, he is in his childhood, and experience may perchance still teach him. If the truth about all these matters were once to dawn on some honest man who had the confidence of these simple, bewildered men, it would spread like wild-fire.

Still, at present, it is painfully evident that these leaders are driving their flocks, who follow one another with sheep-like submission, into a hopeless impasse. Here, in frantic efforts to extricate themselves, they turn to bitter recriminations, and trample on one another like wild animals. What chance is there here, in such an atmosphere, of exorcising the nature of the tiger and the ape? Contrast this with the ordered progression of a free society, developing its resources in the security of equal liberty, the inequalities of life manifestly diminishing, men learning to respect the liberty of others because they value it for themselves, and wealth and comfort sufficient for all being gradually accumulated.

We have said nothing of legislation, and indeed there is nothing to be said. The law can try to keep the peace, but it is powerless to heal the mind diseased, by revealing to it a vision of the better way. That is the supreme need of the hour. This realized, men will no longer waste themselves in forced marches after the ignis fatuus of an impracticable Collectivism, or seek to exchange the civilized instincts of mutual concession for the primitive and savage instincts of coercion.

ART.

ART. VII.-1. Collected Essays. By T. H. Huxley, F.R.S. London, 1894.

2. Essays on Controverted Questions. By the Same. London, 1892.

3. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. By Francis Darwin. London, 1887.

4. Reden. Von Du Bois Reymond. Leipzig, 1887.

5. Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. By F. Howard Collins. London, 1894.

the average citizen who reads as he runs, and who is unacquainted with any tongue save his native British, it may well appear that the Gospel of Unbelief, preached among us during the last half-century, has had its four Evangelists-the Quadrilateral, as they have been called, whose works and outworks, demilunes and frowning bastions, take the public eye, while above them floats the agnostic banner with its strange device, Ignoramus et Ignorabimus.'

6

These pillars of the faith unorthodox which sums itself up as Nescience, rest on one foundation, but are each characteristic and unlike their fellows. Mr. Herbert Spencer may be termed the "Great Philosopher,' who, by cohesions and correspondences, binds worlds and eons together in sesquipedalian chains, with a fulness of language so overpowering that he almost persuades us to look upon all things in heaven and earth as necessary results of the persistence of force, under its forms of matter and motion. Such is the triplicity which, manifesting the Unknowable, finds in the Apostle of the Understanding' a fervent though critical worshipper. Again, Mr. Darwin, though, as he was fain to admit, bewildered' in questions metaphysical, nor given to dwelling on the mechanism of the universe, tells us with gentle iteration that if we grant, by way of commencement, simply a mud-fish with some vestiges of mind,' he will thence deduce all vertebrate animals, including man, and build up science, civilization, and morality, yet not upon sand. Over this astonishing creed, Mr. Tyndall, who by temperament had in him much of the poet, has flung a veil of religious melancholy, adorning with his utmost skill of eloquence, and celebrating with unction, the pithecoid origin of our race which he did not desire to conceal. Mr. Tyndall was a mystic who touched with dreamy colour the harsh and staring outlines of Darwin's biology, and the vast and vague of Spencer's all-embracing world-nebula. The finest qualities, whether of prophet, philanthropist, or man of science, he was

willing

willing to trace back through the ranges of zoology, and farther still, to the fires which are blazing in the sun.

Last of all, but the most effective, as he is undoubtedly the most popular, of the Four, comes Professor Huxley,' all the while sonorous metal breathing martial sounds,' as Milton has it,—to do battle, like a champion armed in complete steel, with creeds and clericals, in untiring opposition' to the enemies of science, be they bishops or biologists, cardinals or followers of Hegel, Prime Ministers in office or out, and orthodox Christians wheresoever found. Always incisive and dogmatic, and, as Darwin observed, writing with a pen dipped in aquafortis, he has been a man of war from his youth up. And now, when he might take his ease in honourable retirement, having ́ warmed both hands at the fire of life,' he seems not unwilling to fight his battles over again, by collecting in a general view the records of his many encounters, and republishing his Essays with scarcely the change of a syllable.

6

If

They are lively but delusive reading. Of the Gospel which is thus in pungent style commended to our attention, we remark at the outset that it is calculated, in spite of its obvious frankness, or because of it, to entrap the unwary. we may borrow an expression from the author, this latest message of science-misleadingly so called-is woven of ideal cobwebs' stretched above the abyss of Mr. Spencer's Unknowable, and shining prettily enough in the sun. Who first hung them out before mankind? We do not pretend to know; but David Hume, 'the prince of agnostics,' certainly did so a hundred and fifty years ago, smiling at his own cleverness, and with such an innocent air that he seemed rather to be taking for granted what everyone thought, than transforming into hopeless enigmas the beliefs men had cherished concerning God, the Soul, and Immortality. Now, since the animated discussions in which Kant led the way, those who are skilled in metaphysics have learnt that Hume's polite and flowing rhetoric needs to be sharply scanned, its terms sifted to the bottom, and its assumptions pointed out. The majority of readers, however, cannot do this for themselves. They are not, nor ever will be, metaphysicians; they listen in good faith to the specious language of demonstration, and their-we had almost said incurablenaïveté in the presence of celebrated teachers makes them ready victims whenever ambiguities which really hold the key of the position are inflicted upon them.

Professor Huxley's doctrine is by its nature and essence double-seeming; it takes the sovereign words, and plays upon them, and makes them of two colours. Outwardly it is Science, Vol. 180.-No. 359.

M

inwardly

inwardly Nescience. It has given a mighty impetus to Materialism. Yet Professor Huxley affirms with scornful vehemence that he is no Materialist. It has marshalled squadrons against free-will, and all that is called 'spirit and spontaneity.' But the author protests that free-will has not been ousted by science, and that a drawn battle in this region is all one with giving the victory to the old and orthodox banner. It is couched in terms that make of man the merest automaton, that deny any possible effect in the physical world to his volition. Yet, marvellous to relate, when a timid Bishop proposes that Christians shall confine their petitions to things spiritual, Professor Huxley steps forward, and in language clear as day, and with felicitous illustration, supplies to embarrassed spirits an argument which restores all that the prelate had too speedily surrendered. Darwinism appeals to scientific observers especially on the ground that it puts an end to final causes, silences Paley, and throws back theologians upon an uncertain à priori demonstration. At once the Professor replies that 'evolution has no more bearing upon Theism than has the First Book of Euclid.' To crown all, Hume being confessedly as much of a Pyrrhonist, or absolute sceptic, as any man can be whose reason is not totally in abeyance, and Professor Huxley delighting to stand by him, we yet find with equal pleasure and amazement that the latter values truth so highly, and is so convinced of its objective worth, that sooner than give it up at the bidding of an evil fiend, though omnipotent, he is prepared to undergo the worst such fiend can do upon him, be the torture as intolerable as it may, and its duration everlasting. If this be not to confess the 'transcendental,' to know what is at the heart of the universe and to worship it as known, we do not understand the meaning of words. Yet, in the very height and ecstasy of his passion for the truth, irrespective of utilitarian reckonings whether in regard to himself or the race (for what he would dare on behalf of virtue, the Professor would surely recommend to every living mortal), this most heroic of self-contradictors tells us in an aside, that his worship is chiefly of the silent sort, and at the altar of the Unknown, which, when he first made its acquaintance, was the Unknowable.

Such flashes from a higher light, and revelations, as unexpected as they are welcome, of what German philosophy has called the Absolute, lend a charm to the Professor's eloquence that no want of logic, however manifest, can wholly dissolve. They betoken the change that is passing over science no less than literature, the new spirit and the wider views towards which men are moving as they realize how inadequate, how

much