ipso facto excluded from science. In vain, however, do we seek in the writings of such authors for any proof of this. It is, on the contrary, nothing better in the writings of the best of them than a mere dogma or postulate; and for advancing it as such, assuredly there is great want of an adequate sanction. To quote the authority of Bacon on such a point, even though it went a great deal further than it goes, is quite out of place now-a-days. Bacon said, and it is notorious that for many ages previous to his time, reason, without the use of which science cannot exist, had been kept down, and the principle of authority, clothing itself in the garb of religion, had been constantly invoked to settle every question in science as well as in religion. It was therefore natural and expedient that Bacon should do what he could for the emancipation of science. But now that private judgment, even in religion, has been freely allowed its full swing for centuries, the case is widely different; and for the advocates of the free use of reason to invoke the authority of Bacon to establish the opinion that science and religion have nothing to do with each other, is a paralogism in a twofold point of view. When Newton says, in the general scholium at the end of the Principia, "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an Intelligent and Powerful Being," he gives utterance to an inference as truly logical and as truly scientific as any to be found in his immortal work. If it be religious as well as scientific, there is no help for it. The truth is, that the distinction between scientific and religious does not exist in pure thought at all. It is wholly conventional. The attempt has been made no doubt, and with much success, to show that the grounds of religion, in so far as reason can reach them, are intensely obscure; and it has been proposed on this account to have nothing to do with them. But then it has also been shown, and that with at least equal cogency, that the grounds of science are equally obscure; and that if mere obscurity in the grounds or subject-matter be a legitimate cause of declining thought, reason is excluded from science no less than from religion.

The fact is, that both science and religion are united by reason in such a way that no man ought to attempt to put them asunder. The same train of thought, logical and continuous throughout, is often purely scientific in its rise, and purely religious in its close; and for any man to say to it in its course of spontaneous development in his mind, "Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further," to arrest it when sacred symbols begin to present themselves as its expression, is merely to do homage to a witless canon, than which there is none that is more arbitrary among the canons of Rome. Far from feeling bound to rest in the merely scientific, the legitimate and spontaneous course of man's free thought, when contemplating and reasoning upon nature, is to find its last word, its

haven and its sabbath, in God. Let us then hear our author with acceptance when he so eloquently says, "All nature is invested with a sacredness, when, through the material form, the rays of heavenly glory benignly shine. Everything on earth is but a faint shadow cast by the vast heavenly reality. The kingdoms of this world are but the miniature exhibitions, the fleeting shadows, of the eternal kingdom above. Every exercise of love on earth is but the feeblest reflection of the infinity involved in the expression, 'God is love.' Are judicial functions exercised among men, and is awful justice dispensed with an equal hand? Then here we find the transient image of the spiritual kingdom, for justice and judgment are the habitation of God's throne.' Does the blade appear above the earth? immortality is brought to light by this gospel. Or does language express our thoughts, and prove the medium between the seen and the unseen? Then the Incarnate Logos arises before us, the Mediator between God and man. No spiritual condition can exist, however varied, but has its exact image reflected in nature's mirror. So innumerable, indeed, are the instances of this representative character, that we are forced to the conclusion that nature was intended as a typical dispensation," &c.

But it may be said that in this extract, as throughout the volume under review, there is a recognition of miracles, respecting which, assuredly, it may be affirmed with new confidence that science is silent.

Let us see to what extent it can be said, as it so often is, that the idea of miracle is excluded from pure science, and that it attaches not to philosophy at all, but to legend and history only. The argument for this view is the "uniformity of nature." But this, of course, is to beg the question, and to exclude miracles by hypothesis, unless by uniformity of nature be meant some law of reason affirming that nature must be uniform. Now, though this has been argued (and that sometimes very inconsiderately by the friends of miracles), yet, in point of fact, the mind's affirmation of the uniformity of nature is nothing more than a particular application of that general law of mind whereby it universally affirms identity where no difference appears. But this is a law for thoughts, and not for things. And doubtless, within its own sphere, like all other laws, its authority is paramount and its guidance infallible; for of a thought this is the characteristic, that everything that is in it appears; and therefore there is no room for fallacy in affirming of thoughts, that they are identical where no difference appears in them. But with regard to things the case is very different. In them there may be much that does not appear; and we have no logical sanction for affirming the uniformity of nature, beyond that strong probability which arises from a very general observation to that effect. Such is all the sanction contained in the so-called

Inductive Principle. But when it has been brought to this, which is its true position, we are compelled to confess, that there is a strong probability on the other hand, also, that the uniformity of nature shall be occasionally diversified by miracle. Thus the general consciousness of mankind affirms that there is in the universe such a thing as liberty or free power. There is in fact such a thing to a certain extent in man himself. But if in man or anywhere else, then assuredly in the Almighty. If, then, creation is to be the symbol or manifestation of the Creator, which is the theme of the volume under review to maintain, we ought to have, and may confidently expect, not only uniformity in nature, as the expression of law and intelligence, but also, on fit occasions, miracles, as the expression of liberty and free power. Without miracle, in fact, creation would be defective as such. It would be wanting in a display of the most wonderful fact in existence, the most central attribute of the being of the Creator-His ever living power and supreme freewill.

But perhaps the entire thesis of our author is denied; perhaps it is said that creation is not a manifestation of the Creator, and that we are not to look to the kingdom of Nature for any types and symbols of the kingdom of Grace at all. This is an opinion in which, we fear, many well-disposed people participate, and in consequence of so doing they look with no hope to science as a revealer of God, and are even jealous of its pretensions. It is certain, however, that such an apprehension is groundless, such an opinion a mistake. If Creation be entitled to that name at all, it must be expressive of the essential attributes of the Creator. It forms our very conception of the relation which exists between cause and effect, that the effect shall be impressed by the characteristics or attributes of the cause which produced it. Whatever may be the facts as to details, and however successful or unsuccessful we may be in discovering the representative and symbolic character of nature, there can be no doubt, if nature be really a creation, that such representation and symbolism exist. We have therefore to thank our author for his volume in which this thesis is maintained, and we cordially recommend his learned work to those who desire to see this view carried out, especially on the Scriptural side.

The Philosophy of Nature; a Systematic Treatise on the Causes and Laws of Natural Phenomena. By HENRY S. BOASE, M.D., F.R.S. and G.S., &c., Honorary Member of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall. 8vo. London: Longman.

We have here one of those works of which several have appeared of late, which have taken their rise in the belief that experimental science has now been carried so far, and facts accumulated to such an extent, that a systematic conception of the whole economy of nature is possible. And this volume as well as others that we could name have at least this in their favour, that they are the productions of men of very extensive knowledge of nature and philosophical habits of thought, and who have devoted their lives to scientific speculation. It is now upwards of a quarter of a century since our author showed that such was the turn of his mind by the publication of a Geology of Cornwall, his native county, where, if we mistake not, his original design was to practise medicine at Penzance. But having brothers settled as much respected bankers in the flourishing town of Dundee, and seeing an opening for turning his chemical knowledge to account, by securing possession of a large manufactory of that kind in that neighbourhood, he came to the north, where he has now resided for many years, master of his own time, and free to bestow it, as this work shows that he has done, in philosophic thought. And thus the reader of his handsome volume will find himself able to explain and to connect satisfactorily the designation on the title-page (Honorary Member of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall) with the locality from which the preface is dated (Claverhouse, near Dundee, July 1860).

With regard to the characteristic of the author's system, it is happily laid down by the author himself in an early page; and we prefer quoting his words rather than giving any digest of our own, especially as he presents his theory in a very cogent point of view. "The principle of the proposed system is that of the fundamental idea of Power; which is not to be conceived of as a mere efficiency, but as a reason-directed force: a power which is a law unto itself. The real content of such a power is its principle of activity or force; the ideal form of the same is its reason, whether intuitive or conscious, according to which the force functions; whilst the power itself is the synthesis of the real and ideal-an indissoluble union, which is manifested as an essential entity or individual being. By abstraction, however, a power may be regarded on either one or the other side of its existence; and according to the stand-point from which it is viewed, the knowledge is said to be real or ideal. Such is the character of a power or reason-directed force. In nature

there are a great many powers, each differing from all others in the peculiar attribute of its force, and in the special law by which the operations of its force are regulated. But the grand and distinguishing character of natural powers is, that they are always associated together in pairs or dualisms: there is no such thing in nature as a single insulated power; such a power can only be an unconditioned or absolute being. On this twofold constitution of all natural bodies physical phenomena depend; for it renders action and reaction possible, without which they could not function. And not only so, but in each dualism the powers are not only coexistent, but also directly opposite in their attributes; and it is to this antagonism of forces that the conditioned character of nature must be attributed; for the constituent powers of natural bodies mutually control and limit each other's energies." (P. 10.)

Such is the profound yet perspicuous paragraph in which the author first announces the general principle of his system; yet we must not leave it to stand by itself, otherwise the reader might be apt to infer that we have in our author's views only a scientific development of Spinozism on the physical side. That such an inference, however, would be a complete mistake, the following paragraph renders plain :-" Natural beings, as we have already stated, are dualisms of powers. We can, however, conceive of an infinite and absolute power, by positing it as the negation of a natural conditioned power; and by contemplating the transcendent wisdom manifested in the operations of finite powers, we may infer that such a power is omniscient as well as omnipotent. Thus far, by the light of nature, man may arrive at the conception of a Supreme power: but if he seeks to know the relation in which he in common with all other natural subordinate powers bears to the Supreme, he desires knowledge which nature cannot impart; he can therefore only obtain it through some supernatural channel. Revelation has taught us that Absolute Being, the Great I Am or Deity, is such a power as we are considering; a Reason-directed Force to whom all things are possible according to the counsel of His will, which is the perfection of wisdom

And as one star differs from another in glory, so cosmical beings rise one above another in dignity till they culminate in man, whose attributes are a microcosm comprehending all others, together with its distinguishing mark of conscious reason. The natural universal is distinguished from the summum genus of ontology by its conditioned or finite character; and from the collateral branch of the conditioned, the angelic host, in having material instead of spiritual bodies; or, in other words, the natural and the supernatural are distinct branches of conditioned beings, subordinate to, but not forming part of, the Absolute or Supreme Being." (P. 19.)

Our author having stated the general grounds of his system, proceeds to comment, though very shortly, on the unsatisfactory