in the real sense of the word, which is derived from our experience of will, and therefore involves a passage from a mental to a physical act, and not, as in the case before us, a passage from a physical to a mental. But this announcement came too late to prevent the erection of those great systems of Materialistic Philosophy, whose authors, nothing doubting, went to work with Physical Science not only as their instrument of investigation, which was legitimate, but as their standpoint of interpretation, which was false and fatal. For, the result of thus making Physical Science, with its retort and scalpel, the standpoint of interpretation, is that they have dropped out of the problem to be solved-the great problem of the world and human life-its two most characteristic and essential elements the idea of quality and the idea of cause. From the point of view of Physical Science, a cause, as all scientists admit, can be an antecedent only, nothing more, and the relation of cause and effect, that of antecedent and consequent merely. To get any other idea of cause you must abandon the scientific standpoint. The true idea of cause, as these very scientists themselves admit, is got from the experience of our wills as opposed to the resistance of objects about us. But this experience could never be got from Physical Science, which can take cognizance only of what can be seen or touched; but can only be known from introspection—that is to say, from the mind itself. In like manner, too, if we take Physical Science as our standpoint for interpreting the world and human life, and regard (as the materialists do) the higher feelings of the mind as but the compounding and re-compounding of some primitive simple feeling, how can we get the difference in quality, which all feel and admit, between a feeling of selfishness and one of self-denial, a feeling of honesty and one of policy, a feeling of fear and one of reverence, a feeling of lust and one of love? Obviously the difference of quality, which can only be known to the mind, cannot be discovered by physical science. It is got by introspection only-that is to say, from the standpoint of the mind itself. Indeed to carry out consistently the interpretation of the world from the standpoint of Physical Science, one would have to regard intellect, virtue, and beauty, as mere forms of matter and motion-for if changes in the physical organ of the brain are the bases of all the mental attributes, changes in matter and motion again are the bases of changes in the brain—and thus that idea of quality, which is most immediate to men's lives and thoughts, would cease to exist. How a thinker, who takes Physical Science as his standpoint of interpretation, and from it desires to construct a theory of the world at all harmonious, adequate, and complete, is reduced to extremities; how he is compelled to shift the standpoint he has taken up, and occasionally, as if for life, to throw it overboard altogether, may be seen in the following illustration with which I may fitly conclude these few discursive remarks. It is taken from the First Principles of Herbert Spencer, the book which is the basis of his whole philosophy, and which contains those doctrines which distinguish it from all other forms of Positivism. In this work Spencer sets out with the determination to give to Science and Religion such a reconciliation as shall be at once convincing, complete, and ultimate; and to do this satisfactorily, his object is to show that at bottom both Science and Religion rest on one and the same ultimate fact or truth, and that therefore in this truth they are harmonized and reconciled. Accordingly, after a long and complicated analysis, he brings both Religion and Science down to this ultimate fact, which he calls The persistence of Force,' or, as he otherwise expresses it, the fact that the quantity of force in the Universe continues fixed and constant. This is the truth on which Religion rests, and, being also the truth on which Science rests, it is, according to Spencer, the truth in which they are reconciled. Now, when one remembers that it is admitted on all hands (even Spencer himself admits it) that Science deals with the phenomenal world, the world of men and things-whereas Religion deals with that which lies behind the phenomenal world, and of which the world of men and things are the manifestations and passing shows, one will be prepared to find a fallacy somewhere, and most probably that the term 'persistence of Force' will have been so manipulated that, instead of being used consistently throughout to mean one thing, it will have been used indifferently to mean two quite distinct things. And such, indeed, is the case. In one half of the book, Spencer uses the term 'persistence of force' to express simply the sum-total of forces in the natural world; in the other half, he uses it to express that which lies behind these forces, which is the cause of them, and of which they are the manifestations and effects; and, like a skilful circus-rider, he steps from one to the other indifferently as it suits his purpose. A small but most significant circumstance in regard to this is, that he writes 'persistence of force' with a small letter, when he means it to stand for the sum-total of forces in Nature, but with a capital letter, as we should expect, when he means it to represent that which lies behind Nature, and which corresponds, in a way, to our idea of God. Science can rest on the 'persistence of force' only in the sense in which the persistence of force means that sumtotal of forces in the natural world which never varies in amount; Religion can rest on the persistence of Force' only in the sense in which the term is used to mean the ever-present Cause behind these forces. This fatal confusion in the use of the term 'persistence of force' is paralleled by an equally fatal confusion in the use of the term cause.' In its scientific sense, the 'persistence of force' can be a cause only in so far as it is an antecedent, and in this sense the cause of the phenomena of the world to-day would lie in the phenomena of yesterday. But the phenomena of the world to-day, Spencer says, are the manifestations or effects of an Unknown Cause, that underlies alike the present, past, and future. That is to say, every phenomenon has at the same time two different causes, one which precedes it and another which underlies it which is of course a palpable absurdity. In another place Spencer has defined the 'persistence of force,' when used to denote that of which the visible material world is the effect, as an Infinite and Eternal Energy, by which all things are created and sustained;' whereas he had already defined it to be the truth that the quantity of force in the Universe remains fixed and constant, that is to say, is finite and definite, and the very reverse of infinite. F CHAPTER V. CARDINAL NEWMAN. HAVING seen that neither History, Physical Science, Metaphysics, nor Psychology can, by their methods or subjectmatter, throw light on the great problem of civilization-with the varied play of religion, government, and material and social conditions which that involves-I now invite the reader to a brief consideration of the new organon of truth announced by Cardinal Newman in his Grammar of Assent, and set forth by him in that work with an unusual abundance of illustration and detail. This new organon or instrument of truth he has called the Illative Sense.' But, as preliminary, and by way of seeing better the full bearing of this organon on the problems of life, it may be expedient perhaps to consider for a moment the character of the author, and the objects which by means of his new instrument he seeks to realize. Born with a deep and pious nature, Newman's youth fell on a time when the militant attitude and aggressive criticisms of Science on the one hand, and the torpor of the established Church on the other, had begotten a general scepticism among the cultivated, and among the great masses, a deep and wide-spread indifference to religious concerns. Possessed of that devout and more or less ascetic spirit, which may go hand in hand equally with intellectual gifts of the meanest or the highest order, a spirit which has always a tendency to subordinate the merely cold and abstract truths of the reason, to the deep longings of the heart for something on which, in this harsh world, to repose in safety and loving trust, Newman's thoughts as he grew to manhood naturally turned to religion—to that religion which, by its very nature, is the haven of those homeless souls who |