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ly the same meaning, and to define words so that the meaning attached to them shall be strictly in accordance with fact or truth, are two very different things; and Max Müller has overstepped this distinction. In this latter sense, a perfect definition is the last result of all our inquiries and discussions. To say of such a definition that it would put an end to disputes, is simply to say that men have attained, and generally acquiesced in, the last discoverable truth. Our lecturer has permitted himself to confound these two very different ideas connected with the word definition -the one pointing to a perfect instrument for the communication of thought, the other to the truest thought that can be gathered under the word.

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"I shall, in conclusion," says Max Müller, give two or three instances to indicate the manner in which I think the science of Language might be of advantage to the philosopher.

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Knowledge, or to know, is used in modern languages in at least three different senses.

"First, we may say, a child knows his mother, or a dog knows his master. This means no more than they recognise one present sensuous impression as identical with a past sensuous impression. This kind of knowledge arises simply from the testimony of the senses, or sensuous memory, and it is shared in common by man and animal.

"Secondly, we may say, I know this to be a triangle. Here we have a general conception, that of triangle, which is not supplied by the senses alone, but elaborated by reason; and we predicate this of something which we perceive at the time by our senses. We recognise a particular sensuous impression as falling under the general category of triangle. Here you perceive the difference. We not only recognise what we see as the same thing we had seen before, but we must previously have gathered certain impressions into one cluster, and have given a name to this cluster, before we can apply that name whenever the same cluster presents itself again. This is knowledge denied to the animal, and peculiar to man as a reasonable being.

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Thirdly, we say that man knows there is a God. This knowledge is based

neither on the evidence of the senses nor on the evidence of reason. No man has ever seen God, no man has ever formed a general conception of God. Neither sense nor reason can supply a knowledge of God. What are called the proofs of the existence of God, whether ontological, teleological, or kosmological, are possible only after the idea of God has been realised within us. Here, then, we have a third kind of knowledge, which imparts to us what is neither furnished by the organs of sense, nor elaborated by our reason, and which, nevertheless, possesses evidence equal, nay superior, to the evidence of sense and reason.

"Unless these three kinds of know

ledge are carefully distinguished, the receive the most contradictory angeneral question, How we know? must

swers.'

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Here Max Müller has given us, in a few words, his theory of the nature of human knowledge. a theory which we will resist the temptation of discussing. He may be right or wrong in his theory; but it is unmistakable error to say that the science of language, or any logical or etymological definitions of the word knowledge, or to know, can help us in receiving it. What ideas we shall gather under this word knowledge, is precisely the subject of controversy. He thinks our knowledge of God is intuitive; others consider it a legitimate inference from the purposes, or great purpose (let us say the development of man), seen in creation. How can anything whatever, which can be described as specially pertaining to the science of language, assist us in determining this dispute? It is open to every disputant to do as Max Müller has here done-simply to beg the question by making his own definition of knowledge.

In the same triumphant way he defines the words "faith" and "to believe." He says:

"When we speak of our belief in God, or in the immortality of the soul, or in the Divine government of the world, or in the Sonship of Christ, we want to express a certainty independent

of sense, evidence, and reason, yet more convincing than either-evidence not to be shaken either by the report of the senses, or by the conclusion of logical arguments.'

Very true; he who has a consciousness of this kind of certainty wants a word to express it; but what of those who have no such consciousness? Can you bring conviction to them out of the science of language?

"Faith," he says, a little further on, is that "organ of knowledge by which we apprehend the Infinite." By "faith" is generally understood the knowledge or the thought itself, not a specific "organ" of knowledge. His system of philosophy, we presume, needs such an organ, and therefore he frames this definition. Some of his learned coadjutors at Oxford are teaching at this moment that we cannot apprehend the Infinite. Max Müller would apply philology to their case. He thinks that men have called the Infinite "a negative idea, because infinite is derived from finite by means of the negative particle in!" Mr Mansel will hardly accept this as either a sufficient answer to, or a fair account of, the difficulty he put before the public, when, arguing from the relative nature of human knowledge, he said of the Absolute and the Infinite that they involved a negation of the conditions of human knowledge.

Max Müller says, with perfect truth, that before discussing the supernatural, men ought to have already defined to themselves what they mean by the natural. A better hint could not be given to our controversialists. But the definition must be wrought out by clear thinking; the Professor of Language cannot, as such, give us the requisite definition. The Professor of Language is not ex officio the arbiter of all disputes. What is a miracle? is a question often asked at the present day. The old and familiar answer was, that it was the power of God producing an event other

than such as are produced by the same power, in what is called the course of nature. There has grown up in some quarters an indisposition to make this contrast between the miracle and the course or constancy of nature, and new definitions of the miracle have been lately hazarded. Some have called in Mr Babbage's machine to help them to explain their new account of miracles. That or any other machine might continue, say they, producing one effect for a certain long period of time, and thenstill under its own mechanical laws

it might produce suddenly some quite novel effect. What we call a miracle may be some such quite novel effect produced at long intervals by the operation of the constant laws of nature. In which case, we may add, the worker of the miracle-that is, the prophet who stands before us as such-must have been either himself deceived as to the nature of the wonder that was wrought, or he must be supposed to have had a miraculous knowledge that just at a certain moment the apparently anomalous event would be produced; and he must have taken advantage of this knowledge to represent to the public that such extraordinary event was accomplished by God in answer to his prayer! Whether this is a very enlightened view of the subject, we will not here discuss. We prefer the old definition of a miracle. But such ideas are rife, and Max Müller proposes as a remedy, or method of arbitrament, the study of language!

"Here," he says, "a large field is open to the student of language. It is his office to trace the original meaning of each word, to follow up its history, its changes of form and meaning in the schools of philosophy, or in the marketplace and the senate. He ought to show how frequently different ideas are comprehended under one and the same term, and how frequently the same idea is expressed by different terms. These two tendencies in language, Homonymy and Polyonymy, which favoured, as we

saw, the abundant growth of early mythology, are still asserting their power of fostering the growth of philosophical systems. A history of such terms as to know and to believe, finite and infinite, real and necessary, would do more than anything else to clear the philosophical atmosphere of our day."

It might do much to make our discussions sharp and distinct, it could do nothing towards finally determining our doubts and difficulties where two different ideas really present themselves to the mind, and we have to choose between them. If the question is, What ought to be the definition of the term miracle? it cannot suffice to give us a history of the old definitions which it is sought to discard. Max Müller very pointedly alludes to "an excellent article lately published in the 'Edinburgh Review On the Supernatural, ascribed to one of our most eminent statesmen." That article would modify, in some respects, the ideas hitherto attached to the word supernatural. Would he arrest the speculations of the eminent statesman whom he here compliments, by some history of the word? All our philosophical terms, and all

our terms for immaterial existence, Max Müller himself assures us, are modifications of some root originally applied to a sensible object, or to an act appealing to the senses. It has become a philosophical term by the growth of thought, and the professor of the science of language has only to watch that growth; he can have no power, and, we presume, no wish, to arrest it at a certain stage.

There was no necessity for our professor of the science of language to exalt unduly the importance of the study to which he is attached. It has its own great and most legitimate interest. The present volume is full of attractive matter on the great subject of language; and, looking back upon it, we regret that we have allowed ourselves to be carried away from these into discussions of a more abstract nature. But it is too late to retrace our steps. The valuable remarks and curious etymologies with which the volume abounds, will certainly be best studied in the work itself; while perhaps the few precautionary or qualifying observations we have made will not be altogether useless.

THE LIFE OF JESUS.

Ir is a reproach frequently addressed to the Church, that she is more disposed to utter fulminations against the heretics who assail her, than to reply with sound reason and argument to their attacks. People say that the clergy are as ready as ever to denounce, and, when the occasion serves, to persecute, but that they are very slow to do manful battle for their faith, and meet their antagonists with their own opinions. Such a reproach has a specially severe meaning in an age so generally tolerant and reasonable, entertaining so large an amount of amiable, devout, and intelligent heretics, and feeling itself so capable of calm discussion upon every subject under the sun. Toleration has indeed become so universal that we have not only ceased to persecute, but have to a great extent ceased to understand the conditions under which persecution is possible; and people have even been known to assert that the Essays and Reviews,' and indeed Dr Colenso himself, instead of being condemned, should have been answered. This idea, however, like most effusions of popular sentiment, contains, along with a little truth, a great deal of injustice. When theology was treated scientifically, and the assailants of Christianity were men who had the grace to wait a response, and to accept in good faith the rôle of Deist, Atheist, or Sceptic, it was practicable enough to prepare replies to all their arguments, and Christian apologists were not wanting; but the matter has entirely changed since those days, in England at least. The utterances of sceptical opinion, which may be considered most dangerous, are at present about as unanswerable as a popular novel. In saying so we do not mean to imply any sneer at the popular qualities which make such a work as M. Rénan's 'Vie de Jésus' attrac

VOL. XCVI.-NO. DLXXXVIII.

tive to the ordinary reader. There is no reason why a book should be less worthy of consideration or thought because it is so written as to be always pleasant to read. The impossibility of serious reply to such a production arises from a perfectly different cause. It is because of its ephemeral and momentary nature that it is next to impossible for the defenders of Christianity to reply specially to such an attack. Unless, indeed, we could secure a previous understanding with the intending assailant, and so have due entry into the lists along with him in all the stately politeness of chivalry, it is difficult to see what the Christian champion can do. What his adversary has prepared and elaborated by the toil of years, by travels and researches which demand leisure, he must either reply to flying, putting not only himself but his argument under the most serious disadvantages-or he must be content to record only his denial and disapproval of it, in face of a generation which, at the height of its admiration, has already half forgotten what its enthusiasm was about. A few months ago the work of which we speak was discussed everywhere. Last summer we found it in its primitive shape, an imposing volume, in the chief bookseller's shop of a little Scotch country town, where French literature seldom penetrates. spring, straying vaguely into Detken's, in Naples, in search of the English traveller's chief solace, the novels of the Tauchnitz series, we found not only that popular body of literature, but even the multitudinous volumes of Dumas and his disciples, lost and buried under a locust flood of little volumes in yellow paper, the cheap edition of the 'Vie de Jésus.' The book had thrust itself into all kinds of editions in the meanwhile, and had ranged freely between and beyond the antipodal

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regions of the High Street, Kenna- only way to meet an assault such quhair, and the Palazzo Reale. A as we have described, is one which book of such universal prevalence has finally produced the little volwould seem, at first sight, the work ume entitled, 'The Christ of the of all others which it was the Gospels and the Christ of Modern Church's duty to answer. And it Criticism,' '* an admirable though is very possible that at the present brief exposition at once of M. Rémoment conscientious "apologists" nan's books, and of the historical are labouring hard after the airy and philosophical as well as Chrisfootsteps of M. Rénan, and making tian principles which negative its a solid response at their leisure to conclusions. Principal Tulloch's his production. But in the mean Lectures have already fulfilled the time the whirligig Time has brought primary and immediate purpose for about its revenges. The tide has which they were in no respect after turned. The "wind of doctrine" date, and, having done so, come as has swept over Christendom and dis- fitly as modestly to the public, not appeared. The shelves that once so much in refutation of the brilgroaned under his various-sized oc- liant Frenchman's idyll, as in calm tavos have now forgotten Rénan. remonstrance and protest against Care and research are necessary to- the principles at once of historical day to find a single copy of the book inquiry and moral criticism, which which a little while ago lay as thick have produced this last and newest as autumn leaves. Under such exposition of the ideas of the ninecircumstances, what is the Christian teenth century. Religious declacritic to do? So far as it is pos- mation or pious horror would be sible to reply by a rapid magazine out of place from a chair in which article or flying feuilleton, he has theology has to be treated as a a chance of following on the traces science, and where to prove all of his agile opponent, but there things is as necessary as to hold are many people who object to such fast that which is true. Nor is it, weapons of religious defence. To fortunately, the custom nowadays meet the highly-polished and cun- to impute motives, or set down, as ningly-prepared arrow thus deliv- in more primitive times, a religious ered flying, by the heavy artillery speculatist as naturally an impious which requires both time and space man. Principal Tulloch himself is for its evolutions, is manifestly im- one of the chief leaders of religious possible; for the sparkling projec- thought in Scotland, and is neither tile has flown into oblivion and afraid of speculation, nor disposed darkness long before the great guns to confine it within artificial limits. can be got in order, and the world On the contrary, he considers it a does but pause to ask what it is all necessary instrument in the Church, about when the tardy broadside destined to weed and winnow the rings into all the echoes. To be superfluous matter which attaches sure, it is a very good thing that itself to every real substance of such assaults upon the common truth; and it is, accordingly, withfaith should be ephemeral as well out any undue heat or prejudice that as periodical; but it is at the same he looks at M. Rénan, whose real time rather a hard case for the qualities of scholarship he acknowChristian teacher who has addressed ledges without hesitation, and himself to their serious considera- against whose honesty he makes tion. no suggestion. The faults he alleges against the book are of a more radical quality. To call it blas

Such being the case, the most effectual, and indeed almost the

* Lectures on M. Rénan's "Vie de Jésus." By John Tulloch, D.D., Principal of the College of St Mary, in the University of St Andrews. Macmillan : 1864.

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