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house at Stoke Newington (only pulled down about teu years ago), which had stables and grounds of considerable size. From the negotiations for the marriage of his daughter Sophia it appears that he had landed property in more than one place, and he had obtained on lease in 1722 a considerable estate from the corporation of Colchester. It was formerly thought that he soon got rid of this lease, but from documents in Mr Lee's possession it seems that he only effected a mortgage upon it (afterwards paid off), and that it was settled on his unmarried daughter at his death. Other property was similarly allotted to his widow and remaining children, though some difficulty seems to have arisen from the misconduct of his son, to whom, for some purpose, the property was assigned during his father's lifetime, and who refused to pay what was due. There is a good deal of mystery about the end of Defoe's life; it used to be said that he died insolvent, and that he had been in jail shortly before his death. As a matter of fact, after great suffering, from gout and stone, he died of a lethargy in Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields, on Monday the 6th of April 1731, and was buried in the well-known ground of Bunhill Fields. He left no will, all his property having been previously assigned, and letters of administration were taken out by a creditor. How his affairs fell into this condition, why he did not die in his own house, and why in the previous summer he had been in hiding, as we know he was from a letter still extant, are points apparently not to be cleared up. Defoe was twice married, and his second wife Susannah outlived him a few months. He had seven children, one of whom, Martha, died in 1707-the others survived him. The eldest, Daniel, emigrated to Carolina. The second, Bernard or Benjamin Norton. has, like his father, a scandalous niche in the Dunciad. Three of the daughters, Maria, Henrietta, and Sophia, married well-the, husband of the last-named being a Mr Henry Baker, of some repute in natural science. In April 1877 public attention was called to the existence, in some distress, of three maiden ladies, directly descended from Defoe, and bearing his name; and a crown pension of £75 a year was bestowed on each of them. There are several portraits of Defoe, the principal one being engraved by Vandergucht.

We have said that in his life-time Defoe, as not belonging to either of the great parties at a time of the bitterest party strife, was subjected to obloquy on both sides. The great Whig writers leave him unnoticed. Swift and Gay speak slightingly of him, the former, it is true, at a time when he was only known as a party pamphleteer. Pope, with less excuse, put him in the Dunciad towards the end of his life, but he confessed to Spence in private that Defoe had written many things and none bad. At a later period he was unjustly described as "a scurrilous party writer," which he certainly was not; but, on the other hand, Johnson spoke of his writing so variously and so well," and put Robinson Crusoe among the only three books that readers wish longer. From Scott downwards the tendency to judge literary work on its own merits has to a great extent restored Defoe to his proper place, or, to speak more correctly, has set him there for the first time. Lord Macaulay's description of Roxana, Moll Flanders, and Colonel Jack as "utterly nauseous and wretched" must be set aside as a freak of criticism.

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The grounds upon which the last-mentioned writer bases his depreciation of others of Defoe's minor works are curious. "He had undoubtedly a knack of making fiction look like truth, but is such a knack much to be desired Is it not of the same sort as the knack of a painter who takes in the birds with his fruit ?" And De Quincey regards the literary skill of writers of this class as comparatively inferior because of the close resemblance of their writings to the current speech and manner of their day. But

nothing is really a greater triumph of art than this similarity, and Macaulay has certainly made a mistake in confounding the requirements of painting and of writing. Scott justly observed that Defoe's style "is the last which should be attempted by a writer of inferior genius; for Though it be possible to disguise mediocrity by fine writing, it appears in all its naked inanity when it assumes the garb of simplicity." The methods by which Defoe attains his result are not difficult to disengage. They are the presentment of all his ideas and scenes in the plainest and most direct language, the frequent employment of colloquial forms of speech, the constant insertion of little material details and illustrations, often of a more or less digressive form, and, in his historico-fictitious works, as well as in bie novels, the most rigid attention to vivacity and consistency of character. Plot he disregards, and he is fond of throwing his dialogues into regular dramatic form, with bye-play prescribed and stage directions interspersed. A particular trick of his is also to divide his arguments after the manner of the preachers of his day into heads and subheads, with actual numerical signs affixed to them. These mannerisms undoubtedly help and emphasize the extraordinary faithfulness to nature of his fictions, but it would be a great mistake to suppose that they fully explain their charm. Defoe possessed genius, and his secret is at the last as impalpable as the secret of genius always is.

The character of Defoe, both mental and moral, is very clearly indicated in his works. He, the satirist of the trueborn Englishınan, was himself a model, with some notable variations and improvements, of the Englishman of his period. He saw a great many things, and what he did see he saw clearly. But there were also a great mary things which he did not see, and there was often no logical connection whatever between his vision and his blindness. The most curious example of this inconsistency, or rather of this indifference to general principle, occurs in his Essuy on Projects. He there speaks very briefly and slightingly of life-insurance, probably because it was then regarded as impious by religionists of his complexion. But on either side of this refusal are to be found elaborate projects of friendly societies and widows' funds, which practically cover, in a clumsy and roundabout manner, the whole ground of life-insurance. In morals it is evident that be was, according to his lights, a strictly honest and honourable man. But sentiment of any high-flying description (to use the cant word of his time) was quite incomprehensible to him, or rather never presented itself as a thing to be compre hended. He tells us with honest and simple pride that when his patron Harley fell out, and Godolphin came in, he for three years held no communication with the former, and seems quite incapable of comprehending the delicacy which would have obliged him to follow Harley's fallen fortunes. His very anomalous position in regard to Mist is also indicative of a rather blunt moral perception. One of the most affecting things in his novels is the heroic constancy and fidelity of the maid Amy to her exemplary mistress Roxana. But Amy, scarcely by her own fault, is drawn into certain breaches of certain definite moral laws which Defoe did understand, and she is therefore condemned, with hardly a word of pity, to a miserable end. Nothing heroic or romantic was within Defoe's view; he could not understand passionate love, ideal loyalty, æsthetic admiration, or anything of the kind; and it is probable that many of the little sordid touches which delight us by their apparent satire were, as designed, not satire at all, but merely a faithful representation of the feelings and ideas of the classes of which he himself was a unit. We have noticed Charles Lamb's difficulty as to The Complete Tradesman, and we think that the explanation we have preferred will extend to a great deal more of his work.

Some peculiarities of that work follow as a natural corollary from those considerations. His political and economical pamphlets are almost unmatched as clear presentations of the views of their writer. For driving the nail home no one but Swift excels him, and Swift perhaps only in The Drapier's Letters. There is often a great deal to be said against the view presented in those pamphlets, but Defoe sees nothing of it. He was perfectly fair but perfectly one-sided, being generally happily ignorant of everything which told against his own view.

The same characteristics are curiously illustrated in his moral works. The morality of these is almost amusing in its downright positive character. With all the Puritan eagerness to push a clear, uncompromising, Scripture-based distinction of right and wrong into the affairs of every-day life, he has a thoroughly English horror of casuistry, and his clumsy canons consequently make wild work with the infinite intricacies of human nature. We have noticed, in remarking on The Use and Abuse, the worst instance of this blundering morality. Another, though very different instance, is his amusingly feminine indignation at the increased wages and embellished dress of servants. He is, in fact, an incarnate instance of the tendency, which has so often been remarked by other nations in the English, to drag in moral distinctions at every turn, and to confound everything which is novel to the experience, unpleasant to the taste, and incomprehensible to the understanding, under the general epithets of wrong, wicked, and shocking. His works of this class therefore are now the least valuable, though not the least curious, of his books. His periodical publications necessarily fall to some extent under the two foregoing heads, and only deserve separate notice because of the novelty and importance of their conception. His poetry, as poetry, is altogether beneath criticism. It is sometimes vigorous, but its vigour is merely that of prose. Of his novels we have already spoken in detail, excepting, as universally known, Robinson Crusoe.

The earliest regular life and estimate of Defce is that of Dr Towers in the Biographia Britannica. Chalmers's Life, however (1786), added very considerable information In 1838 Mr Walter Wilson wrote the book which is the standard on the subject. It is coloured by political prejudice; it does not display any critical power of a high order; and it is in many parts rather a history of England with some relation to Defoe than a life of the latter; but it is a model of painstaking care. and by its abundant citations from works both of Defoe and of others, which are practically inaccessible to the general reader, is invaluable. In 1859 appeared a life of Defoe by Mr William Chadwick, an extraordinary rhap: sody in a style which is half Cobbett and half Carlyle, but amusing, and by no means devoid of acuteness. In 1864 the discovery of the six letters stirred up Mr William Lee to a new investigation, and the results of this were published (London, 1869) in three large volumes. The first of these (well illustrated) contains a new life and particulars of the author's discoveries. The second and third contain fugitive writings assigned by Mr Lee to Defoe for the first time. For most of these, however, we have no authority but Mr Lee's own impressions of style, &c.; and consequently, though qualified judges will in most cases agree that Defoe may have written them, it cannot positively be stated that he did. Mr Lee is equally chary of his reasons for attributing and denying many larger works to his author. His work, though full of research and in many ways useful in correcting and enlarging previous accounts of Defoe, has therefore to be used with some caution. Besides these publications devoted exclusively to Defoe, there are others of the essay kind which may be consulted respecting him. Such articles have been written by Scott, Hazlitt, Forster, a writer in The Retrospective Review, Mr Leslie Stephen, and others. No criticisms can, however, compare with three short pieces by Charles Lamb, two of which were written for Wilson's book, and the third for The Reflector.

It has been a frequent and well-grounded complaint that no complete erlition of Defoe's works has ever been published. There is, as may be gathered from what has already been said, considerable uncertainty about many of them; and even if all contested works be exoluded, the number is still enormous. Besides the list in Bohn's Lowndes, which is somewhat of an omniun yatherum, three lists drawn with more or less

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care have been compiled in the last half century. Wilson's contains 210 distinct works, three or four only of which are marked as doubtful; Hazlitt's enumerates 183 "genuine" and 52 "attributed" pieces, with notes on most of them; Mr Lee's extends to 254, of which 64 claim to be new additions. Of these large numbers many are in the original editions, extremely scarce, if not unique. Only one perfect copy of the Review is known published Complete Gentleman, is in the hands of Mr James Crossley to exist, and this, as well as the partially printed but never of Manchester, whose Defoe collection is nearest to completeness. Of reprints only one has ever aspired to be exhaustivo. was edited for the "Pulteney Library" by Hazlitt in 1840-43. It contains a good and full life mainly derived from Wilson. the whole of the novels (including the Serious Reflections now hardly ever published with Robinson Crusoe), Jure Divino. The Use and Abuse of Marriage, and many of the more important tracts and smaller works. The introductions are not written on a very uniform principle, but it is otherwise an excellent edition, and had it been continued (it stopped abruptly after the third volume had been completed and a few parts of a fourth issued) would have been satisfactory enough. It is still far the best, but is unfortunately scarce and expensive. There is also an edition. often called Scott's, but really edited by Sir G C. Lewis, in twenty volumes (London. 1841). This contains the Complete Tradesman. Religious Courtship, The Consolidator, and other works not comprised in Hazlitt's, but is correspondingly deficient. It also is somewhat expensive in a complete state, and the editions chosen for reprinting are not always the best. had previously in 1809 edited for Ballantyne some of the novels, in Bohn's libraries contain an edition which through want of support was stopped at the seventh volume. It includes the novels (except the third part of Robinson Crusoe, The History of the Devil, The Storm, and a few political pamphlets, also the burgh published in one volume an admirable selection from Defoe. It undoubtedly spurious Mother Ross. In 1870 Mr Nimmo of Edincontains Chalmers's Life, annotated and completed from Wilson and Lee, Robinson Crusoe, pts. i. and ii.. Colonel Jack, The Cavalier, Duncan Campbell, The Plague, Everybody's Business, Mrs Veal, The Shortest Way with Dissenters, Giving Alms no Charity, The True-born Englishman, Hymn to the Pillory, and very copious extracts from The Complete English Tradesman. Had the space occupied by Robinson Crusoe, which in one form or another every one possesses, been devoted to a further selection from the minor works, to all but professed students of literature. this book would have gone far to supply a very fair idea of Defoe If we turn to separate works, the bibliography of Defoe is practically confined (except as far as original editions are concerned) to Robinson Crusoe. Mrs Veal has been to some extent popularized by the work which it helped to sell; Religious Courtship and The Family Instructor had a vogue among the middle class until well into this century, and reprints and editions of Crusoe have been innumerable; it has The History of the Union was republished in 1786. But the been often translated; and the eulogy pronounced on it by Rousseau tations) have also been common. gave it special currency in France, where imitations (or rather adap(G. SA.)

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the most distinguished ethical and metaphysical philo DE GÉRANDO, MARIE JOSEPH (1772-1842), one of sophers of France, was born at Lyons, February 29, 1772. When that city was besieged in 1793 by the armies of the republic, the young De Gérando took up arms in defence of his native place, was made prisoner, and with difficulty escaped with his life. He first took refuge in Switzerland, whence he afterwards fled to Naples. In 1796, after an allowed him to return to France. Finding himself, at the exile of three years, the establishment of the Directory age of twenty-five, without a profession, he resolved to embrace the career of arms, and enlisted as a private in a cavalry regiment. About this time the Institute had proposed as a subject for an essåy this question,-"What is the influence of symbols on the faculty of thought?" De Gérando gained the prize, and heard of his success after the battle of Zurich, in which he had distinguished himself. This literary triumph was the first step in his upward career. In 1799 he was attached to the ministry of the interior by Lucien Bonaparte; in 1804 he became general secretary under Champagny; in 1805 he accompanied Napoleon into Italy; in 1808 he was nominated master of requests; in 1811 he received the title of councillor of state; and in the following year he was appointed governor of Catalonia, On the overthrow of the empire, De Gérando

was allowed to retain this office; but having been sent during the hundred days into the department of the Moselle to organize the defence of that district, he was punished at the second Restoration by a few months of neglect. He was soon after, however, readmitted into the council of state, where he distinguished himself by the prudence and conciliatory tendency of his views. In 1819 he opened at the law-school of Paris a class of public and administrative law, which in 1822 was suppressed by Government, but was re-opened six years later under the Martignac ministry. In 1837 the Government acknowledged the long and important services which De Gérando had rendered to his country by raising him to the peerage. He died in Paris, November 9, 1842, at the age of seventy.

De Gérando's works are very numerous. That by which he is best known now, and which constitutes his chief title to posthumous fame, is his Histoire Comparée des Systèmes de Philosophie relativement aux principes des Connaissances Humaines, of which the first edition appeared at Paris in 1804, in 3 vols. 8vo. The germ of this work had already appeared in the author's Mémoire de la Génération des Connaissances Humaines, crowned by the Academy of Berlin, and published at Berlin in 1802. In this work De Gérando, after a rapid review of ancient and modern speculations on the origin of our ideas, singles out the theory of primary ideas, which he endeavours to combat under all its forms. The latter half of the work, devoted to the analysis of the intellectual faculties, is intended to show how all human knowledge is the result of experience; and reflection is assumed as the source of our ideas of substance, of unity, and of identity.

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De Gérando's great work is divided into two parts, the first of which is purely historical, and devoted to an exposition of various philosophical systems; in the second, which comprises fourteen chapters of the entire work, the distinctive characters and value of these systems are compared and discussed. Great fault has been found with this plan, and justly, as it is impossible to separate advantageously the history and critical examination of doctrine in the arbitrary manner which De Gérando has chosen for himself. Despite this disadvantage, however, the work has great merits. It brought back the minds of men to a due veneration for the great names in philosophical science, a point which had been utterly neglected by Condillac and his school. In correctness of detail and comprehensiveness of view it was greatly superior to every work of the same kind that had hitherto appeared in France. During the Empire and the first years of the Restoration, De Gérando found time, despite his political avocations, to recast the first edition of his Histoire Comparée, of which a second edition appeared at Paris in 1823, in 4 vols. 8vo. The plan and method of this edition are the same as in the first; but it is enriched with so many additions that it may pass for an entirely new work. The last chapter of the part published during the author's lifetime ends with the revival of letters and the philosophy of the 15th century. The second part, carrying the work down to the close of the 18th century, was published posthumously by his son in four vols. (Paris, 1847). Twenty-three chapters of this had been left complete by the author in manuscript; the remaining three were supplied from other sources, chiefly printed but unpublished memoirs.

The next valuable work of De Gérardo was his essay Du perfectionnement moral et l'éducation de soi-même, crowned by the French Academy in 1825. The fundamental idea of this work is that human life is in reality only a great education, of which perfection is the aim.

Besides the works already mentioned. De Gérando left many others, of which we may indicate the following:-Considérations sur diverses méthodes d'observation des peuples sauvages, 8vo, Paris, 1801;

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Eloge de Dumersais,—discours qui a remporté le prix proposé par la seconde classe de l'Institut National, 8vo, Paris, 1805; Le Visiteur du pauvre, 8vo, Paris, 1820; Institutes du Droit Administratif, ▲ vols. 8vo, Paris, 1830; Cours normal des instituteurs primaires ou Directions relatives à l'éducation physique, morale, et intellectuelle dans les écoles primaires, 8vo, Paris, 1832; De l'éducation des Sourds-Muets, 2 vols. Paris, 1832; De la Bienfaisance publique, 4 vols. 8vo, 1838. A detailed analysis of the Histoire Comparée des Systèmes will be found in the Fragments Philosophiques of M. Cousin.

DEGGENDORF, or DECKENDORE, the chief town of a

district in Lower Bavaria, about 25 miles north-west of Passau, on the left bank of the Danube, which is there crossed by two iron bridges. It is situated at the lower end of the beautiful valley of the Perlbach, with the mountains of the Bavarian Forest rising behind; and in itself it is a well-built and attractive town. Besides the administrative

offices it possesses an old council-house dating from 1566, a hospital, a lunatic asylum, an orphanage, a poor-house, and a large parish church rebuilt in 1756; but of greater interest than any of these is the Church of the Sacred Tomb, which for centuries attracted thousands of pilgrims to its Porta Coeli, Gnadenpforte, or Gate of Mercy, opened annually on St Michael's Eve, near the end of September, and closed again on the 4th of October. In 1837, on the celebration of the 500th anniversary of this solemnity, the number of pilgrims was reckoned at nearly 100,000. Such importance as the town possesses is now rather commercial than religious,-it being the main depôt for the timber-trade of the Bavarian Forest, a station for the Danube steamboat company, and the seat of several mills, breweries, potteries, and other industrial establishments. On the bank of the Danube, outside the town, are the remains of the castle of Findelstein; and on the Ceiersberg, in the immediate vicinity, stands the old pilgrimage-church of Marice Dolores. About six miles to the north is the village of Metten, with the Benedictine monastery founded by Charlemagne in 801, restored as an abbey in 1840 by Louis I. of Bavaria, and tion of Deggendorf occurs in 868, and it appears as a town well-known for its educational institutions. The first menin 1212. Henry XIII. of the Landshut dynasty made it the seat of a custom-house; and in 1331 it became the residence of Henry III. of Natternberg, so called from a In 1337 there took place in castle in the neighbourhood. the town a dreadful massacre of the Jews, who were accused of having thrown the sacred host of the Church of the Sacred Tomb into a well; and it is probably from about this date that the pilgrimage above mentioned came into vogne. The town was captured by the Swedish forces in 1633, and in the war of the Austrian succession it was more than once laid in ashes. Population in 1871, 5452.

See Grüber and Müller, Der Bayerische Wald, Ratisbon, 1851; Mittermüller, Die heil. Hostien und die Juden in Deggendorf, Landshut, 1866; and Das Kloster Metlen, Straubing, 1857.

DEHRA DÚN, a district of British India in the Meerut (Mirat) division of the lieutenant-governorship of the NorthWestern Provinces, lies between 29° 57′ and 30° 59' N. lat., and 77° 37' 15" and 78°22′ 45′′ E. long. It comprises the valley (dún) of Dehra, together with the hills division (parganá) of Jaunsár Báwar, which runs from S.E. to N.W. of it, on the north. The district is bounded on the N. by the native state of Tehri or Garhwal, on the E.`by British Garhwal, on the S. by the Siwálik hills, which separate it from Saharanpur district, and on the W. by the hill states of Sirmur, Jubol, and Taránch. The valley (the Dún) has an area of about 673 square miles, and forms a parallelogram 45 miles from N.W. to S.E. and 15 miles broad. It is well wooded, undulating, and intersected by streams. On the N.E. the horizon is bounded by the Mussooree (Mansuri) or lower range of the Himalayas, and on the S. by the Siwálik hills. The Himalayas in the north

is a favourite summer resort. Its population varies according to the season of the year. During the winter months it is almost entirely deserted. Landaur, the military depot for European convalescents, is really a portion of Mussooree. Chakráta is a hill station for a British regiment of infantry.

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of the district attain a height of between 7000 and 8000 | Trigonometrical Survey. The hill station of Mussooree feet, one peak reaching an elevation of 8565 feet; the highest point of the Siwálik range is 3041 above sea-level. The principal passes through the Siwálik hills are the Timli, pass, leading to the military station of Chakráta, and the Mohand pass leading to the sanatoriums of Mussooree and Landaur. The Ganges bounds the Dehra valley on the E.; the Jumna bounds it on the W. From a point about midway between the two rivers, and near the town of Debra, runs a ridge which forms the water-shed of the valley. To the west of this ridge, the water collects to form the Asan, a tributary of the Jumna; whilst to the east the Suswa receives the drainage and flows into the Ganges. To the east the valley is characterized by swamps and forests, but to the west the natural depressions freely carry off the surface drainage. Along the central ridge, the waterlevel lies at a great depth from the surface (228 feet), but it rises gradually as the country declines towards the great rivers. To meet the demand for water five canals have been constructed, and are fed by the hill streams. These canals have a total length of 67 miles, irrigate about 10,734 acres, and yield a net annual revenue of about £2300. Jaunsár Báwar, north of the valley, comprises a triangular hilly tract, situated between the Tons and Jumna rivers near their point of confluence, and has an area of about 343 square miles. It is covered with forests of deodars, firs, cypresses, and oaks.

The agricultural products consist of rice, mandua (Eleusine corocana), oil seeds, millets, vegetables, and garden crops, such as potatoes, turmeric, red pepper, &c. The method of cultivation in the valley does not differ from that adopted in the plains; but in Jaunsár, the khil or jum❘ system of cultivation is largely practised This consists in clearing and burning the undergrowth on the steep banks of ravines and hills, and in sprinkling the seed, chiefly millets, over the ashes. The process yields a good crop for about two years, when the sitɔ is abandoned. The principal industries are tea planting and cultivation, rhea cultivation, and recently silk cultivation. The area under tea in 1872 was 2024 acres, yielding an out-turn of 297,828 Ib, valued at £17,486.

The total revenue derived from Dehra district (exclusivo of forests) in 1872-73 amounted to £19,169. Since 1872 the Dehra valley has been subject to the ordinary laws of other settled districts; but in the hilly division of Jaunsár a less formal code is better suited to the people, and this tract is still "non-regulation." The fiscal arrangements of Jaunsár are also peculiar. The tract is divided into khats, each presided over by a sayana, or head-man. The sayanas engage with the Government for the payment of the land revenue, and exercise police and civil jurisdiction in their respective khats; whilst a committee of sayanas, subject to the control of the British Superintendent of Dehra Dun, decide graver disputes affecting one or more khats. Education is progressing rapidly in the Dehra valley. Schools have also been established in Jaunsár. Mussooree has Protestant diocesan schools for European boys and girls; and similar institutions are managed by Roman Catholic priests for members of that faith. It likewise forms the head-quarters of an active American mission. There is little crime in the district, and in Jaunsár no regular police are found necessary.

The principal places in the district are Dehra, Mussooree, with the military sanatarium of Landaur, and the military station of Chakráta. Dehra town is the civil head-quarters of the district, and is constituted a municipality. It contained (1872) a total population of about 7000 souls, (5000 Hindus, and 2000 Mahometans). The municipal income is mainly derived from a house tax. Dehra is the headquarters of the 2d Gurkha regiment, and of the Great

The census of 1872 returned the population of the entire district at 116,953 souls, of whom 102,814 were Hindus, 12,427 Mussul mans, 1061 Europeans, 191 Eurasians, and 460 native Christians. The Brahmans numbered 10,279, Rájputs or military caste 33,125, Baniyas or traders 2664. The Brahmans and Rájputs chiefly belong to the spurious hill clans bearing these names. Mahometan population consists principally of Patháns and Shaikhs. DEISM is the received name for a current of theological thought which, though not confined to one country, or to any well-defined period, had England for its principal source, and was most conspicuous in the last years of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century. The deists, differing widely in important matters of belief, were yet agreed in seeking above all to establish the certainty and sufficiency of natural religion in opposition to the positive religions, and in tacitly or expressly denying the unique significance of a supernatural revelation in the Old and New Testaments. They either ignored the Scriptures, endeavoured to prove them in the main but a helpful republication of the Evangelium æternum, or directly impugned their divine character, their infallibility, and the validity of their evidences as a complete manifestation of the will of God. The term deism is not only used to signify the main body of the deists' teaching, or the tendency they represent, but has of late especially come into use as a technical term for one specific metaphysical doctrine as to the relation of God to the universe, assumed to have been characteristic of the deists, and to have distinguished them from atheists, pantheists, and theists,-the belief, namely, that the first cause of the universe is a personal God, but is not only distinct from the world but apart from it and its concerns.

The words deism and deist were treated as novelties in the polemical theology of the latter half of the 16th century in France, but were used substantially in the same sense as they were a century later in England. By the majority of those historically known as the English Deists, from Blount onwards, the naine was owned and honoured. They were also occasionally called rationalists. Free-thinker (in Ger many, freidenker) was generally taken to be synonymous with deist, though obviously capable of a wider signification, and as coincident with esprit fort, and with libertin in the original and theological sense of the latter word. Naturalists was a name frequently used of such as recognized no god but nature, of so-called Spinozists, atheists; but both in England and Germany, in the 18th century, this word was more commonly and aptly in use for those who founded their religion on the lumen naturæ alone. The same men were not seldom assaulted under the name of theists; the later distinction between theist and deist, which stamped the latter word as exeluding the belief in providence or in the immanence of God, was apparently formulated in the end of the 18th century by those rationalists who were aggrieved at being identified with the naturalists.

The chief names amongst the deists are those of Lord Herbert (1581-1648), Blount (1654-1693), Tindal (16571733) Woolston (1669-1733), Toland (1670-1722), Shaftesbury (1671-1713) Bolingbroke (1678-1751), Collins (1676-1729), Morgan (1-1743), and Chubb (1679-1746). Annet, who died in 1768, and Dodwell who made his contribution to the controversy in 1742, are of less importance. Of the ten first named, nine appear to have been born within twenty-five years of one another; and it is noteworthy that by far the greater part of the VII,

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literary activity of the deists, as well as of their voluminous | either as a whole or in its details. Blount, a man of a very opponents, falls within the same half century.

The impulses that promoted a vein of thought cognate to deism were active both before and since the time of its greatest notoriety. But there are many reasons to show why, in the 17th century, men should have set themselves with a new zeal, in politics, law, and theology, to follow the light of nature alone, and to cast aside, to the utmost of their ability, the fetters of tradition and prescriptive right, of positive codes, and scholastic systems, and why in England especially there should, amongst numerous free-thinkers, have been not a few free writers. The significance of the Copernican system, as the total overthrow of the traditional conception of the universe, dawned on all educated men. In physics, Descartes had prepared the way for the final triumph of the mechanical explanation of the world in Newton's system. In England the new philosophy had broken with timehonoured beliefs more completely. than it had done even in France; Hobbes was more startling than Bacon. Locke's philosophy, as well as his theology, served as a school for the deists. Men had become weary of Protestant scholasticism; religious wars had made peaceful thinkers seek to take the edge off dogmatical rancour; and the multiplicity of religious sects provoked distrust of the common basis on which all founded. There was a school of distinctively latitudinarian thought in the Church of England; others not unnaturally thought it better to extend the realm of the adiaphora beyond the sphere of Protestant ritual or the details of systematic divinity. Arminianism had revived the rational side of theological method. Semi-Arians and Unitarians, though sufficiently distinguished from the freethinkers by reverence for the letter of Scripture, might be held to encourage departure from the ancient landmarks. The scholarly labours of Huet, Simon, Dupin, and Clericus, of Lightfoot, Spencer, and Prideaux, of Mill and Fell, furnished new materials for controversy; and the scope of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus had naturally been much more fully apprehended than ever his Ethica could be. The success of the English revolution permitted men to turn from the active side of political and theological controversy to speculation and theory; and curiosity was more powerful than faith. Much new ferment was working. The toleration and the free press of England gave it scope. Deism was one of the results.

A great part of the deistical teaching was the same from first to last; but though deism cannot be said to have any marked logical development, it went through a sufficiently observable chronological growth.

Long ere England was ripe to welcome deistic thought, Lord Herbert earned the name "Father of Deism" by laying down the main line of that religious philosophy which in various forms continued ever after to be the backbone of deistic systems. He based his theology on a comprehensive, if insufficient, survey of the nature, foundation, limits, and tests of human knowledge. And amongst the divinely implanted, original, indefeasible notitia communes of the human mind, he found as foremost his five articles that there is one supreme God, that he is to be worshipped, that worship consists chiefly of virtue and piety, that we must repent of our sins and cease from them, and that there are rewards and punishments here and here after. These truths, though often clouded, are found in all religions and at all times, and are the essentials of any religion-their universal prevalence being, along with their immediacy, an unmistakable mark of their verity. Thus Herbert sought to do for the religion of nature what his friend Grotius was doing for natural law,-making a new application of the standard of .Vincentius, Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab onmibus.

Herbert had hardly criticised the Christian revelation

different spirit, did both, and in so doing may be regarded as having inaugurated the second main line of deistic procedure, that of historico-critical examination of the Old and New Testaments. Blount adopted and expanded Hobbes's arguments against the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; and, mainly in the words of Burnet's Archeologia Philosophica, he asserts the total inconsistency of the Mosaic Hexaemeron with the Copernican theory of the heavens, dwelling with emphasis on the impossibility of admitting the view developed in Genesis, that the earth is the most important part of the universe. He assumes that the narrative was meant ethically, not physically, in order to eliminate false and polytheistic notions; and he draws attention to that double narrative in Genesis which was elsewhere to be so fruitfully handled. The examination of the miracles of Apollonius of Tyana, professedly founded on papers of Lord Herbert's, is meant to suggest similar considerations with regard to the miracles of Christ. Naturalistic explanations of some of these are proposed, and a mythical theory is distinctly foreshadowed when Blount dwells on the inevitable tendency of men, especially long after the event, to discover miracles attendant on the birth and death of their heroes. Blount assaults the doctrine of a mediator as irreligious; and much more pronouncedly than Herbert he dwells on the view, afterwards regarded as a special characteristic of all deists, that much or most error in religion has been invented or knowingly maintained by sagacious men for the easier maintenance of good government, or in the interests of themselves and their class. And when he heaps suspicion, not on Christian dogmas, but on beliefs of which the resemblance to Christian tenets is sufficiently patent, the real aim is so transparent that his method seems to partake rather of the nature of literary eccentricity than of polemical artifice; yet by this disingenuous indirectness he gave his argument that savour of duplicity which ever after clung to the popular conception of deism.

Shaftesbury, dealing with matters for the most part different from those usually handled by the deists, stands almost wholly out of their ranks. But he showed how loosely he held the views he did not go out of his way to attack, and made it plain how little weight the letter of Scripture had for himself; and, writing with much greater power than any of the deists, he was held to have done more than any one of them to forward the cause for which they wrought. Founding ethics on the native and cultivable capacity in men to appreciate worth in men and actions, and associating the apprehension of morality with the apprehension of beauty, he makes morality wholly independent of scriptural enactment, and still more, of theological forecasting of future bliss or agony. He yet insisted on religion as the crown of virtue; and, arguing that religion is inseparable from a high and holy enthusiasm for the divine plan of the universe, he sought the root of religion in feeling, not in accurate beliefs or meritorious good works. The theology of those was of little account with him, he said, who in a system of dry and barren notions “pay handsome compliments to the Deity," "remove providence," "explode devotion," and leave but "little of zeal, affection, or warmth in what they call rational religion." In the protest against the scheme of "judging truth by counting noses," Shaftesbury recognized the danger of the standard which seemed to satisfy many deists; and in almost every respect he has more in common with those who afterwards, in Germany, annihilated the pretensions of complacent rationalism than with the rationalists themselves.

Toland, writing at first professedly without hostility to any of the received elements of the Christian faith, insisted that Christianity was not mysterious, and that the value of

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