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theory that Climate is the prime cause of the difference between nations, in power and energy, energy, in customs and forms of government, when our own experience teaches us that climate, although a factor in social phenomena, is after all only a factor of subordinate importance? What has it availed Buckle that he should have spent years in ransacking the libraries of the world in support of his theory that man is the slave of circumstances, when every day shows us that circumstances are as often the slaves of men, as men are the slaves of circumstances? What has it availed Carlyle that he should have spent his long life wrestling with Dryasdusts in dreary despair, wringing history and biography to prove that Hero-worship is the eternal adamantine rock on which alone nations can rest secure, when we see every day, that, while it deifies the hero, it degrades the worshipper, and that, while it sometimes gives rise to a beautiful spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice, it more frequently ends in flunkeyism and meanness of soul?

'Be lord of a day by wisdom and virtue and you may put up your history-books.'

CHAPTER III.

METAPHYSICS.

IN the preceding chapter we entered on an examination of

History, with the view of determining scientifically what light it threw on the Present and the Future: and as the result of that examination we found that in neither of its three great divisions-neither as a mere record and narrative of transactions, such as is found in ordinary history-books, nor as an interweaving and connecting of these with their immediate and special causes, as in the writings of Gibbon, Grote, and Macaulay, nor yet again as a full and all-round interpretation of them, as in Buckle, Comte, and Spencer-did it give us any real insight into the Present, but that, on the contrary, it was insight into the Present that gave to the Past and the theories with which it is overlaid, all the value and credibility they possess for us; thus degrading History as an instrument of knowledge into commentary, illustration, and appendage merely. Now, as the main object of this work is to determine, in as scientific a way as possible, the great laws of the human mind on which religions are constructed, and along the lines of which they are evolved, and the parts played in human life by Religion, Government, and Material and Social Conditions respectively, with the view of exhibiting the way in which these great factors have acted and interacted on each other to produce the complex phenomena of Civilization and Progress, it now becomes necessary to enquire what is the special nature of that insight into the Present, so indispensable for the solution of these great and important problems. And so, running our minds over the different departments of thought, we shall find that, leaving out History and Sociology which we

have seen to be unsuited for our present enterprise, the various recognized instruments of knowledge may all be reduced to four-Physical Science, Political Economy, Metaphysics and the modern science of Psychology. In the present chapter, accordingly, I propose to enquire briefly whether, and to what extent, any of the methods employed in these various departments of thought will furnish us with what we require.

Of the Physical and Natural Sciences, with their Baconian methods of observation and experiment, little, indeed, need be said. A glance through the pages of Tyndall, Huxley, or Darwin, will show that they deal entirely with physical and material things, and do not touch upon those laws of the mental and spiritual world on which, as I shall endeavour to show, religions are constructed, and along the lines of which they are evolved. No one can be more convinced than myself of the profound influence exerted over the old religious beliefs -the six days' creation, fall of man, and the consequent atonement and redemption-by the discoveries of modern Science as to the position of Man in the universe, the age of the world, and the mode of evolution of the animals and plants covering its surface; and no one can be more alive to the extent to which the evolution of religions is modified by the physical sciences generally. But the object of my enquiries is to find, not what are the facts or truths of the external world by which religions are or have been modified, but what are the laws of the human mind which determine that modification. Religion deals with the thoughts and feelings of the mind; Physical Science with the changes and movements of matter. And just as the changes in the world of matter follow some law of physics, so the changes in the moral and spiritual world may be expected to follow some law of mind. It is evident that the method of external observation and experiment by which the laws of the evolution of matter are determined, cannot be the method by which the laws of the evolution of religions are to be discovered, and that, therefore, the Physical Sciences

cannot furnish us with the organon we require. I am, of course, aware that the physical science of Biology deals, among other things, with the relation existing between the mind and the brain and nervous system, and thereby indirectly establishes a connexion between things mental and things material. But, as this connexion is the basis of the modern science of Psychology, I prefer rather to treat of it under that heading, and so shall postpone all further remarks on it until we arrive at the section dealing with that science.

Of Political Economy, too, a few remarks will suffice. If we run through the pages of Mill or Adam Smith, for example, we shall find that these representative writers deal entirely with the laws that regulate the production and distribution of the material commodity, Wealth, but have nothing to say as to the effects of the different modes of distribution of this commodity on the moral and spiritual nature of man. If the land of a country, for example, is held in a few hands, and kept from dispersion by obstructive laws of entail and settlement of great stringency; and if, further, industry and population have grown up on this basis and adapted themselves to it; Political Economy will step in and undertake to show you the laws by which the relative amount of wealth that shall fall to the landlord, the capitalist, and the labourer respectively shall be regulated; and with that its function ends. I, on the contrary, propose to begin where Political Economy leaves off, and, assuming this particular arrangement of property and industry, shall endeavour to show what effect it, and the aristocratic régime that springs naturally out of it, has on the body of the people living under it—on their culture, their aspirations, their sentiments, and habits of thought. In like manner, too, I propose to deal with the effects on the human mind of that wide and general equality in the distribution of wealth which is the basis of Democracy. It is evident that the science which deals with the laws that regulate the production and distribution of the material commodity, wealth, cannot furnish us with the

organon necessary to determine the laws which regulate the effects of that distribution on the minds and characters of men.

History, the Physical Sciences, and Political Economy, being thus thrown out as unable to furnish us with the organon or instrument of investigation we require, I come now to Metaphysics; and, as the subject is intricate, thorny, and notoriously beset with pitfalls, it will behove me to pick my steps with caution. For my own part, I must frankly say, at the outset, that Metaphysics has long ceased to have any influence on my own speculations; and that neither directly or indirectly have its results been involved in the conclusions which it is the object of this work to enforce. In saying this, I, of course, speak of Metaphysics in its old sense-the sense in which the term was used before the science of Biology had established those definite connections between the mind and the material organ of the brain, the discovery of which has had in many ways such important consequences, and (as embodied in the modern science of Psychology) has almost entirely superseded the old Metaphysics. Now, in order to make clear to myself why a subject so vague and diffuse as Metaphysics, should at no point of its compass have come in contact with questions so wide and general as those to be hereinafter discussed, I have thought it expedient to go through once again some of the standard works on the subject-Locke, Hume, Kant, Mill, and others with the object of determining why its problems and results have been of so little use to me. And, accordingly, on gathering up my impressions, I find that Metaphysics either deals with mere words, unrealities, or fictions, and therefore can be of no use in dealing with facts, realities, and things; or else it stops with the mere analysis of our mental faculties, and therefore can no more give us a knowledge of the truths that are to be seen by these faculties, than an analysis of the structure of the eye can give us a knowledge of the things that are to be seen by the eye. In order to justify my first contention, viz., that Metaphysics deals with mere words and

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