The dispute between acting Force and intending Mind is as unmeaning as the quarrel of a man with his own image. The two are identical,-expressions, now in all dimensions, now in some, of the same nature. Causal power other than Will being an unknown quantity, nay, absolutely out of the sphere of thought, teleology and causality are incorporated in one; and mechanical necessity, instead of being the negation of purpose, is its persistence, the declining, no doubt, of this or that possible diversion to minor ends, but in subservience to the stability of a more comprehensive order. The inexorability of nature is but the faithfulness of God, the maintenance of those unswerving habits in the universe, without which it could train no mind and school no character: and that it is hard and unbending to us does not prevent its being fluid to Him. To affirm purpose therefore in the adjustments of the world is not to set up a rival principle outside their producing force, but to plant, or rather to leave, an integrating thought within it. And, conversely, to trace those adjustments to their "physical causes," is not to withdraw them from their ideal origin, but only to detect the method of carrying the inner meaning to its realization. Who will venture to say, what nevertheless is constantly imagined, that to find how a change comes about is to prove that it was never contemplated? If it were contemplated it would have to be executed somehow; if, the moment you read the machinery provided for this purpose, the purpose itself is quenched from your view, is this the discovery or the loss of a reality?

This treatment of determinate causation as incompatible with conscious aims, is the more curious, as proceeding from a school which, as necessarian, is constantly laboring to show the co-existence of the two in human nature. If man is only a sample of the universal determinism, yet forms purposes, contrives for their accomplishment, and executes them, definite causality and prospective thought can work together, and the field which is occupied by the one is not preoccupied against the other.

The frequent plea, "See, there is no mind here, for all is necessary causation," tacitly concedes that, in order to have mind, there must be exemption from ne

cessity; and can be consistently urged only by one who attributes this exemption to the human will. Is the argument conclusive from his point of view? It would be so, were it possible to prove his premiss, viz., the universality in the kosmos of necessary causation. But this is plainly out of the question, because his amplest science carries the induction, such as it is, only skin-deep into the universe; because he would have to show that the present fixity was not determined by a past exercise of will; because Mind, in proportion as it is orderly and exact in its methods, may assume the semblance of necessity, and be the less suspected that its freedom works by rule. He knows how he himself, though conscious of self-disposal as well as of subjection to nature, presents to the determinist the aspect of a machine; and how can he be secure against a similar illusion in his interpretation of the world? What is to prevent the same combination of free and necessary causality, which he finds in himself from existing also beyond? Nay, if there were only mind-excluding force in nature, how could there arise a force-resisting mind in him? He could not carry in himself new causal beginnings, if in the kosmos whence he comes the lines of possibility were definitely closed.

I revert, then, after weighing these objections, to my "unwiderstehlicher Hang zur Personification," and persist in regarding that which the natural philosopher calls force, and Professor Tyndall raises to an immanent life, as Causal Will, manifesting itself, not in interference with an established order, but in producing it. As it builds and weaves and quickens all matter, and could not otherwise work before us at all, the structures and growths of the material world are its seat, and their phenomena its witnesses: so that the very story,-of saline crystals, and ice-stars, and fern-fronds, and human birth,-which Professor Tyndall tells in order to exclude it, is to me a continuous report of its agency and laws. He asks, what else is there here than matter? than matter? I answer, the movements of matter, with their disposing and "formative power," the attracting and repelling energies, which, dealing with molecules and cells, are not molecules and cells. "Mens agitat molem." Whoever finds

this incredible will soon have to make friends with some abstraction which is but a ghastly mimicry of it; for some conception over and above that of "pure matter," is indispensable to the accurate representation of the simplest facts. If in the typical "oak-tree" the vitality suddenly ceased, the " matter" of it would at the next moment still be there, as certainly as that of a clock which had run down: it would weigh the same as before, and so stand the admitted test of the indestructibility of matter. Yet something is gone which was previously there, and that something has to be described otherwise than in terms of "matter." The droll "hypothesis" which my critic amuses himself with conjecturally attributing to me, "of a vegetative soul," wedded to the tree at a definite date, and quitting it when its term was up, certainly does not help us; and is set up on my behalf, I presume, simply from the facility of knocking it down. But are we any better served by the "alternative" conception of a "formative power," long latent and "6 potential," .e. not forming anything, but only going to do so? I see that the conception contradicts Büchner's dictum, "A power not expressing itself has no existence;" yet am at a loss to know how, during its latency, its presence is ascertained, and to exercise with regard to it "that Vorstellungs-fähigkeit with which, in my efforts to think clearly, I can never dispense." Whilst it lies in wait behind the scenes, before the time for the deposit of the crystal or the germination of the acorn,-where is it? behind what molecules does it hide? through what space is it invisibly present? What shape has it, enabling it to lay its building particles and to agglutinate cells? How does it know the right moment of temperature for stepping on to the stage, and declaring itself without further reserve? In short, all the questions addressed to me respecting the "formative soul" invented for me, I refer back to be answered on behalf of my critic's "potential power." "Potentiality" is an intelligible fact in a being consciously able

to act or to refrain. But when the idea is carried into a system of necessitated phenomena, it means nothing in them, but something in us, as their observers -viz., that we conditionally anticipate a future change, foreseeing a distant term

of a series which would be certain provided the nearer ones were not obscure. To plant this subjective suspense out into the field of nature to do objective work there, now alighting visibly upon the earth, and then hidden again in “an ambrosial cloud," is a sort of intellectual illusion which modern logic might have been expected to cast out.

In truth, the nearer I approach the Power which Professor Tyndall pursues through nature with so subtle and brilliant a chase, and the more I try, by combining the predicates which he gives and withholds, to think it out into the clear, the less distinct does this "ideal somewhat" become, not simply to the imagination, but to intellectual apprehension. A power which is not Mind, yet may be "potential" and exist when and where it makes no sign; which is "immanent" in matter, yet is matter; which "is manifested in the universe," yet is not "a Cause," therefore has no effects; presents to me, I must confess, not an overshadowing mystery, but an assemblage of contradictions. I have always supposed that "Power" was a relative word, and that the correlative was found in the work done :" take away the latter by denying the causation, and the term drops into five letters which might as well be arranged in any other order.

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Yet elsewhere this negative language is balanced by such large affirmative suggestions that I almost cease to feel the interval between my critic's thought and my own. Of the inorganic, the vegetable, and the animal realms he says

"From this point of view all three worlds would constitute a unity, in which I picture life as immanent everywhere. Nor am I anxious to shut out the idea that the life here spoken of may be but a subordinate part and function of a higher life, as the living, moving blood is subordinate to the living man. I resist no such idea, as long as it is not dogmatically imposed. Left for the human mind freely to operate upon, the idea has ethical vitality; but stiffened into a dogma, the inner force disappears, and the outward yoke of a usurping hierarchy takes its place."* Bidding God-speed to this sudden flankattack upon usurping hierarchies and dogmas, I pursue only the main line of march in the free "idea." Whither does it lead me? It shows me the three pro

* Fortnightly Review, November, 1875, p. 596.

vinces which make up our kosmos blended into one organism by an all-pervading life, which conducts all their processes, from the flow of the river to the dynamics of the human brain. This alone brings me to a pause of solemn wonder, -a single power through the whole, and that a living one! But there is more behind. This power, co-extensive though it is with nature, is not all: beyond her level we are to think of a "higher life," to which her laws and history do but give functional expression. May we then really think out this "idea" of a life "higher" than what is supreme in the world,-higher, therefore, than the human? But scale of height above that point we do not possess, except in gradation of intellectual and moral sublimity; and either that Ideal Life must cease to live, or must come before our thought as transcendent Mind and Will, on a scale comprehending as well as permeating the universe. With any guide who brings me hither I sit down with joy and rest. It is the mountain-top, which shows all things in larger relations and through a more lustrous air; and every feature, the great build of the world close at hand; the thinning of the everlasting snows as they stoop and melt towards human life; the opening of sweet valleys below the earlier and wilder pines; and the final plains, teeming in their silence with industry and thought,-is better understood than from level points of view, where the scope is narrowed or the calm is lost. But my guide seems less content than I to rest here, and deserts me, not, so far as I can trace him, to reach a brighter point, but rather to descend into the mists. To the "higher life," transcending our highest, he dares not give the predicate "Mind," or apply the pronoun of Personality. On what scale, then, is it "higher"? If not on the intellectual and moral, then there is that in man which rises above it; for the power of attaining truth and goodness is ideally supreme. If Professor Tyndall can reveal to us something which is higher than Mind and Free Causality, by all means let us accept it at his hands and assign it to God. But in order to profess this, and therefore to deprecate,

as an "anthropomorphism," the ascription of mind to Him, one would have, I think, to be one's self something more than man. Only such a one could cast a look above the level of Reason, to see whether it was overtopped: and so, this fashionable reproach against religion is virtually an arrogating of a superhuman position. As we cannot overfly our own zone, no beat of our wings availing to lift us out of the atmosphere they press, surely, if that "higher life" speaks to us in idea at all, it can only be as Perfect Reason and Righteous Will. Those who find this type of conception not good enough for them,-do they succeed in struggling upwards to a better? Rather, I should fear, does a persistent gravitation gain upon them, till they droop and sink into the alternative faith of blind force which leaves their own rank supreme.

Professor Tyndall sets the belief in "unbroken causal connection" and the "theologic conception" over against each other as "rivals;" and says that an hour's reasoning will give the first the victory.* The victory is impossible, because the rivalry is unreal. Why should not a Mind of illimitable' resources, such as the theologic conception" enthrones in the universe,-conduct and maintain "unbroken causal connection"? Is not such connection congenial with the relations of thought and the harmony of intellectual life? Do not you, the student of nature, yourself admire it? Is it not the theme of your constant praise? Do you not speak with contemptuous aversion of alleged deviations from the steadfast tracks of order? and would you not yourself maintain those tracks, if you were at the head of things? To this attitude you are impelled by a just jealousy for the coherent beauty and worth of science as a whole. If, then, these unswerving lines so dignify the investigating intellect which regressively traces them up, how can it be out of character with the Mind of minds to think them progressively forth?

In the discussion which here reaches its close my object has been simply defensive, to repel the pretension of speculative materialism to supersede the

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theological conception," by tracing that pretension to an imperfect appreciation of the ultimate logic of science. But the idea of Divine Causality which is thus saved, though an essential condition, is not the chief strength of religion; giving perhaps its measure in breadth, but not in depth. Were the physical aspects of the world alone open to us, we should doubtless gain, by reading a divineness between the lines, for beauty a new meaning, for poetry a fuller music, for art a greater elevation; but hardly a better balance of the affections or more fidelity of will. It is not till we cross the chasm which stops the scientific continuity, not till we make a new beginning on the further side, that the “idea of a higher life," emerging now in a far different field, can claim its "ethical value." The self-conscious hemisphere of inner experience, which natural philosophy leaves in the dark,—this it is which turns to its Divine Source; and finds, not in any vacant mystery," but in the living sympathy of a supreme Perfection, "the lifting power of an ideal element in human life." Only by converse with our own minds can we-to use the words of Smith of Cambridge-" steal from them their secrets," and "climb up to the contemplation of the Deity."* It is but too natural that this inner side of knowledge, this melior pars nostri, should be unheeded by those who look on it as the mere accessory fringe of an automatic life, gracefully hanging from the texture, but without a thread of connection beyond; and that with them the word "subjective" should be tantamount to "groundless." They confess the mystery" of this interior experience only to fly from it and refuse its light. Yet here it is that at last light and vision lapse into one, and supply the ἡλιοειδέστατον τῶν opyávovt for the apprehension of the first truths of physical and the last of hyperphysical knowledge. Till we accept the "faiths" which our faculties postulate, we can never know even the sensible world; and when we accept them, we shall know much more. Short of this firm trust in the bases whereon our nature is appointed to stand,-a

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trust which, if destroyed by a half-philosophy, must be restored by a whole one, the grandest "ideas" flung out to play with and turn about in the kaleidoscope of possibilities, or work up as material of poetry and rhetoric, can no more "lift" a human will than the gossamer pluck up the oak on which it swings. Unless your "ideal" reveals the real it has no power, and its "ethic value" is that of a dissolving image or a passing sigh. You must "believe" ere you can

remove mountains:" if you only fancy, they sit as a nightmare on your breast. And if man does nothing well till he ceases to have his vision, and his vision rather has him and wields him for action or repose; and if then he astonishes you with his triumphs over "nature" and her apparent real, is he the only being who thus rides out upon a thought, and makes the elements embody it? Have not these elements already learned their obedience, and grown familiar with the intellectual mandate to which they yield? A man truly possessed, ethically moulded by the pressures of reverence and love, you can never persuade that the beauty, the truth, the goodness which kindles him is but his private altar-lamp: it is an eternal, illimitable light, pervading and consecrating the universe. Unless it be so, it fires him no more; and, instead of utterly surrendering his will to it in trust and sacrifice, he begins to admire it as a little mimic star of his own,-a phosphorescence of matter set up by the chemistry of nature, not to see things by, but to glisten on the darkness of himself. It is vain to expatiate on the need of religion for our nature, and on the elevation of character which it can produce, and in the same breath bid it begone from the home of truth and seek shelter in the tent of romance. If its power is noble, its essence is true. And what that essence comprises has been worked fairly out in the long experiment of Christianity on human nature; which has shown that, in its purest and strongest phase, religion is a variety and last sublimity of personal affection and living communion with an Infinitely Wise and Good and Holy. The expectation that anything will remain if this be dropped, and that by flinging the same sacred vestments of speech round the form of some empty abstraction you can save the continuity

IN the lofty Academic Hall at Pesth, where the remains of the great Hungarian patriot lately stood amidst a nation's sympathetic sorrow, there might be seen, on the black drapery with which the marble walls were hung, the escutcheon of the Deak family; showing, in the middle, a pen and a book—a battle-axe

crowning the top. In a way, this rare coat-of-arms prefigured the late statesman's character and life.

For his country's rights he battled manfully, though his own hands never grasped the war-hatchet, which he would have readily buried for ever. The pen and the book more fitly symbolise his