changed through its several phases. This would be logical and psychological mythology. Except in a figurative sense a belief does not admit of being developed at all. A developed belief is another belief. As a mental act or affirmation a belief exists only in the act or affirmation; and when the affirmation is changed there is no abiding essence which glides over from the old to the new, but a new affirmation is made. If we viewed the modern house as developed from the wigwam we should hardly suppose either that the wigwam evolved itself into the house or that there was a wigwam essence which remained unchanged throughout the evolution and constituted the true nature of the house. The development of the wigwam into the house means the tearing down of the wigwam and replacing it by the house. So in the case in question. If the alleged genesis of religion were historically correct it would not mean that the primal religious conception developed itself or that it was developed into anything else. It would rather mean that human beings in a given stage of progress formed certain conceptions of things unseen, while other human beings in another stage of progress replaced these conceptions by other and higher ones. Fetichism, animism, ghostism, polytheism, monotheism, pantheism, Christianity-these are not phases of a common belief, except in a verbal sense or in the sense of logical classifi cation; in reality and apart from the verbal identities of logic, they are different conceptions which men have formed concerning the invisible world.

The fancy that what was historically first was the raw material out of which the others were made is a meaningless whimsey of the imagination. The fancy that the first belief is the standard by which the others must be judged is equally whimsical and groundless. As well might we say that astrology is the real essence of astronomy, and that to believe modern astronomy is to accept ancient astrology, since the former has developed out of the latter. And finally, if the historical genesis of religion were agreed upon, the truth of the competing conceptions would remain an open question. This could not be settled by any study of evolution. To make such an attempt would be like settling the claims of chemistry by reciting the history of alchemy. The question of truth must be transferred to the court of philosophy, whose function it is to study the 57-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. IX.

grounds and worth of belief, in distinction from its genesis and history. If religion began as animism it is now animism in the same sense in which astronomy is now astrology or chemistry is now alchemy. And, as it is no reproach to these sciences that their beginnings were both crude and unsavory, so it is no reproach to religion that its early forms were both crude and superstitious. This, indeed, is characteristic of all early conceptions, scientific and religious alike. A good part of early science was sheer superstition, and the rest was largely mistaken. But this fact has not the slightest significance for the truth of our present conceptions. A moment's reflection shows this. Yet by dint of talking and much reference to evolution this historical order of genesis has been supposed to reveal in religious ideas an essence of abiding baseness, and also to furnish a standard of their truth. To resume the illustration already given, this is like refuting astronomy and chemistry by belaboring astrology and alchemy. So fearful are the ravages of verbal thinking.

To sum up the matter, it is plain that evolution, in what I have called the scientific sense, is a perfectly harmless and not over-important doctrine. In itself it is as good as any other, and, when proved, or in so far as proved, it is better than any other. It is equally plain that most of the conclusions drawn from it do not follow. The mass of what passes for evolution in popular literature and discussion is bad metaphysics, worse logic, and hearsay science. The term itself has become so vague that it is much to be desired that the distinguished clergymen who now and then make a sensation among the reporters by announcing themselves as believers in evolution would accompany their profession of faith with some interpreting definition. Without this the performance is not altogether unlike expressing a belief in things in general.

Borden P. Bouse.

Воите

ART. II.-MATTHEW ARNOLD.

It is now ten years since Mr. Arnold came to America and gave lectures in some of our cities. He followed in this the example of Thackeray and Dickens, and if his hearing was smaller than theirs it was quite as attentive and appreciating. These men, seeking their own pleasure or profit, gratified our curiosity and stimulated us to read and value their writings, and thus did us an abiding service. Arnold was of noble presence, of kindly, earnest face, and his rich hair, parting and clustering in generous masses, was in that winter of 1883 just sable silvered. He was no orator; his tones were pleasant, but low and slow of utterance, and his drawl was unspeakable. For all that, to cultivated audiences the charm of his personal composure, the beauty of his thought, and the clear, incisive quality of his silvery rhetoric made him very welcome. During his lifetime Mr. Arnold was well rather than widely known among his countrymen as a man of letters and as a thinker. Nor since his sudden death, in 1887, has this statement needed any modification. Yet he was appreciated by his contemporaries; and his works will receive from posterity by just award a permanent place in the ever-lengthening scroll of our English classics, which Americans also claim, seeing that we read them without translations.

Matthew Arnold was born December 24, 1822, in Laleham, England. His father, Thomas Arnold, eminent as clergyman and historian, was still more eminent as a teacher. At Matthew's birth he was privately fitting students for the universities. Later he entered upon his career as head master at Rugby, where many a Tom Brown came to love and respect him. He knew the good and the ill of English boys, as with all their faults the most sincere, energetic, and self-centered of the human race, and with wonderful skill he trained them in sound learning and, still better, in devout and generous sentiments. Molded to his ideals, more than one of his pupils became, like Dean Stanley, a leader and a blessing to the generation following. Matthew was his elder son. Another, William Delafield, early worn out in the educational work of India, died on his homeward route and was buried at Gibraltar; and the

grave of his noble wife is shown beneath the mighty shadow of the Himalayas. In Matthew's boyhood the home of the Arnolds was made at Fox How, in the Lake region, near the cottage of Wordsworth. Here in his vacations the father studied; and here the son could see the Lake Poets, Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth. To Fox How, thus a haunt of the muses, streamed in pilgrimage a line of visitors eminent for literary gifts and sympathies; and young Matthew, who even early "seemed no vulgar boy," could catch the deep things of reason and the sweet things of song. Most reverently sat the lad at the feet of these philosophers and poets.

In 1840, having studied under his father, he entered Baliol College, Oxford, and three years later gained a prize for an English poem. Two years later he was made a fellow of Oriel College. In 1846 he became private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, and so remained for several years. He also—after his marriage with Frances Wightman, daughter of an eminent jurist-served for thirty-four years as her majesty's inspector of British schools. He became in 1857 professor of poetry at Oxford. This office he held for ten years. Occasional poems, oftenest on simple themes, as the death of "Geist," his terrier, or of "Matthias," his canary, afterward appeared, and his "Westminster Abbey," written on the death of Dean Stanley, has the deep tone and solemn movement of a funeral anthem. His later years were given to educational work, to essays, critical and æsthetic, and to public addresses. Death came suddenly—a collapse at some muscular exertion-before either mind or body showed symptoms of decay. The simplicity and unworldliness of his life may be illustrated by the fact that from all his labors he had gathered an estate of only a thousand pounds!

Mr. Arnold's first stir of thought was from Wordsworth, not Wordsworth in his prime, the flush "high priest of man and nature and of human life," but from the venerable laureate when his utterances were beginning to have "the sweetness, the gravity, the beauty, and the languor of death." The son of Thomas Arnold inherited lofty energies; it is a pity that these were impaired by the contemplative egotism of the father's next friend and neighbor. At the time, too, when impressions deep and lasting were easily made on Matthew's mind, Goethe, artist and critic of more than one generation, went to

his grave. How men raved of him! "Knowest thou," says Carlyle, "no prophet, even in the vesture, environment, and dialect of this age? I know him and name him Goethe. In him man's life begins again to be divine." Goethe had at first held the principles of Rousseau. Later, with the serenity of a Brahman and the tone of a Delphic oracle, he announced that the chief end of man is "to cultivate his own spirit." This utterance fell like a gospel on Arnold's ear; he gave himself to expound and enforce it, to engraft it on the literature of his period, and to embody it in the English character and manners. To him we owe that sense of the word "culture" so hard to state, but often synonymous with "life in the spirit" and other words and phrases, such as "perfection," "sweetness and light," "harmonious development," and the like. A better pleader for the new "development" could hardly have been found. Clear and graceful in statement, gentle under criticism, patient under reproof, and witty in reply, he seemed chiefly to fail in what both the sacred and the profane oracles enjoin as the first step in culture-the understanding of himself.

When he was in the receptive undergraduate mood Oxford was still shedding on its children those "last enchantments of the Middle Ages" which can never wholly vanish from its halls and groves. The venerable university "has more criticism now, more knowledge, more light; but such voices as those of my youth it has no longer. They haunt my memory still." Cardinal Newman, not yet a Catholic, seemed destined to revive and spiritualize, if not transform, the Church of England. He entranced young Arnold, who forty years later seemed still to hear him saying: "After the fever of life, after wearinesses and sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and succeeding; after all the changes and chances of this troubled, unhealthy state-at length comes death, at length the white throne of God, at length the beatific vision." The young man heard Goethe say through Carlyle: "Here in the marble sleeps undecaying the fair image of the Past; in your hearts, also, it lives and works. Travel, travel, back into life! Take along with you this holy earnestness, for earnestness alone makes life eternity." And now to him from Massachusetts "a clear, pure voice" brought a strain as new and moving and unforgetable as the strain of Newnan