argument or assertion which discriminates the two ideas, and then tries to confound them. We have the idea of "it must over and above the idea of "it always does." Nay, we cannot even think of the invariability of sequence, without seeing in that invariability the working of a cause. In truth, there is no such thing as invariability, except as applicable to this abstract idea of causal connection. Particular sequences are not invariable. We do not attach the idea of invariability to any one sequence that we see, or hear, or feel, or touch, however uniform our experience of such sequence may be. Every such sequence we can conceive to be interrupted, broken, stopped. But there is one thing we cannot conceive, and that is, that this break or cessation should be itself uncaused. I am not speaking of how this idea arises, nor am I discussing whether it corresponds to an absolute universal truth. I am only saying that we have this idea, and that it is an idea different in kind from mere invariability of sequence, and cannot be resolved into it-unless, indeed, the phrase invariability of sequence be in itself understood as involving the idea of necessity.

*

It is because Mr. Mill rejects the idea of causation, and avoids the word, that he is driven to define our idea of matter as resolvable into a "potentiality of sensation." This is no necessary part of the philosophy which traces all our ideas to experience. Locke, who was the great apostle of that philosophy, describes matter as that which "" causes, or "has power to produce our sensations. And so does Mr. Mill when he speaks as a Logician and not as a Metaphysician. This, so far as it goes, is a fair account of at least the skeleton or framework of our conceptions respecting matter, although I am very far from admitting that it is a complete account, or anything like a complete account, of all that enters into those conceptions. Every analysis of mind, like every analysis of matter, in order to be a true analysis, must account for all the elements to be found in the subject of examination. I do not think that Locke's analysis fulfils this condition. It appears to me that there are elements in our conception of matter -especially as that conception has been enriched by modern science -of which Locke's definition takes no account. But at least it does not commit the blunder of looking at one of these elements, and that one of the most prominent, of defining it, of examining it, and then deliberately rejecting it as non-existent.

The same objections apply, as it seems to me, to all attempts which have been made to reduce the idea of moral obligation to the fear of punishment, to utility, or to any other principle but itself. They all labour under the same insuperable fault of wilfully discarding an element of thought, which is nevertheless recognised in the very terms

* Mill's "Logic," Book I., c. iii., §§ 6, 7, 8.

of the argument by which it is explained away. How it comes, from what source derived-these may be more or less accessible subjects of speculation. But there it is;-differing in kind and in quality from all the supposed elements of its composition, and admitted so to differ in the very comparisons which are drawn between them. Torture it as you will, it cannot be made to confess that it has been changed at

nurse.

In like manner the attempt in biological or physiological science to get rid of the idea of "life," or to reduce it to simpler terms, breaks down into similar confusions. Professor Huxley, in his ingenious and in many ways instructive essay on the "Physical Basis of Life," has tried to represent life as a mere name for the properties of a particular kind of matter called protoplasm, and says it is as absurd to set up these properties into a separate entity under the name of Life, as it would be to set up the properties of water as a separate conception under the name of "aquosity." But in the conduct of this argument Professor Huxley is compelled by the necessities of thought, reflected in the necessities of language, to contradict himself. If life be the property of protoplasm, and nothing else, it must be mere tautology to speak of" living protoplasm," and mere selfcontradiction to speak of "dead protoplasm." And yet Professor Huxley uses both expressions over and over again-and must use them, if he wishes to distinguish between separate ideas, although it be in the very endeavour to confound them.

Professor Huxley complains that it is a frivolous objection to urge that "living protoplasm" can never be analysed, because the life of it is expelled in the very process of analysis. The conclusion defended evidently is, that we are safe in assuming the composition of dead and living protoplasm to be the same. Very well, be it so, then so much the more evident it becomes that the life or the deadness of the protoplasm depends upon something entirely different from that physical composition which is alike in the living and in the dead. Nor does it mend the matter to ascribe the difference between life and death to some undetectable difference in physical "conditions," as distinguished from physical composition. This is merely to hide our conception of one kind of difference which is clear, definite, and immense, under a word chosen because it suggests another kind of difference which is obscure, indefinite, and minute. We may call life a "condition," and deadness another condition, if we please. But this does not alter the fact that if the difference between life and deadness does depend on any physical difference, it is one undetectable, and belonging therefore, at best, to those "substrata of phenomena" which Professor Huxley in the same essay pronounces to be imaginary."

66

I entirely agree with Professor Huxley's assertion that the language both of materialism and of spiritualism has only a relative truth. I believe the idealism which tries to expel our conception of matter to be as false as the materialism which tries to banish our conception of life or spirit. In this respect the language of the vulgar is infinitely more true and more subtle than the language of philosophers. I have spoken elsewhere of "the profound but conscious metaphysics of human speech."* And it has been all the more profound in proportion as it has been unconscious. Language is a self-registering index of the operations of mind. The conceptions of which it is a witness may be defined and traced, but are not to be explained away. All the truth that there is in the phraseology of materialism is reflected accurately in the ordinary use of language. When metaphysicians attempt to get behind that use, they generally do so only to "meddle and muddle." A man may speak of his brains as synonymous with his intellect, and nobody will derive an erroneous impression from language referring to a connection which is the most familiar of all facts, although its nature is incomprehensible. But this is a very different thing from attempting deliberately to confound connection with identity under the cover of some ambiguous word. The half-truth of materialistic phraseology ceases when that phraseology pretends to represent a whole-truth. Morcover, the fallacy which it then becomes is in the nature of nonsense. And this only is my point now. Nor is it surprising that when men try to explain away their own ideas, they should get into the atmosphere of bulls. When we try to get outside ourselves, our attitudes are not likely to be otherwise than ludicrous-as may be seen in the case of our canine friends when they take it into their heads to gyrate in energetic pursuit of their own tails.

The metaphysicians and physicists with whom I have been dealing seem to me to be one and all men who walk up to some idea-some old and familiar acquaintance of the mind-recognise it, peer into its face, and then accost it, as the Irishman accosted his acquaintance in Miss Edgeworth's story: "When I first saw you, I thought it was you, but now I see you are another."

THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE.

STATE

TATE Establishments may be made to rest upon the ground of right or of expediency. It is time that the controversy be narrowed as much as possible, if all hope of a compromise between contending parties is not to be for ever abandoned. These days, in which public opinion ripens rapidly, are not the days in which we can safely depend upon historical privileges or conservative traditions. The advocate of Disestablishment must dispossess his mind of political prejudices, to which his forefathers were strangers, whose secession never involved consciously any political issue, if he expects his adversary in turn to look at the question dispassionately, and not through the medium of traditional prepossessions.

There will be hope of agreement when both sides are content to argue the question as one of simple expediency. The supporter of Disestablishment, must recognise the principle that what was morally right in the sight of the Almighty under the old dispensation, cannot be morally wrong at any time. And the advocate of a State Establishment must abandon his illogical inference, that what was politically right under a given set of circumstances, must be therefore politically right under every new development and phase of human thought whatever. It may be morally wrong, because morally degrading, to surround a grown-up man with the same defences against tempta

tion which are demanded by the ignorance and inexperience of youth.

In examining the question how far it is impossible to unite Nonconformists with Churchmen in any compromise which shall be satisfactory to the conscience of both, we must determine whether either need be called upon to sacrifice any real principle, for the maintenance of which they separately exist.

I. The case of the Nonconformists shall be first considered. The able writer in the June number of this Journal, who defends the principle of Discstablishment, says-"To sacrifice themselves for an institution for the common good would be both patriotism and religion." But if the care of religion on the part of the State be for the common good, or, in other words, if the Establishment be really a "social and religious benefit," it is difficult to understand wherein lies the self-sacrifice, inasmuch as all religious denominations, so far as they are purely religious, with no political ingredients, cannot be supposed to exist for any other object. What is meant probably is this, that Nonconformists are unwilling to part with that amount of religious freedom which they now enjoy. But every system that aims at union must involve individual sacrifice. Such sacrifice is the payment which is due from each for the general good, and which, in another shape, comes back to him. Whether in the case of individuals or churches, laws are enacted for the protection, not the restraint, of freedom. Moreover, schism is essentially reproductive: the spirit of division is the spirit of sub-division. If none will conform to any system in which he finds something from which to dissent, then Nonconformity has no ultimate refuge but in Individualism. The liberty, which adhesion to the Establishment would require to be sacrificed, whether in regard to patronage, dependent upon the will of the Sovereign, or to those who have alienated property for endowments, is to be counterbalanced by the greater diffusion of religious instruction throughout the neglected deserts, unreached by the more wasteful and isolated action of a sect-torn Christianity. The privi lege to be sacrificed is the right to defend some one-sided view of Christian teaching or discipline: the benefit which will be secured by such surrender is the recognition of national brotherhood, and the worship of a common Father. The original Nonconformists were seceders because of violence done to the religious conscience; but can the followers of Owen or Wesley urge this motive with any show of justice now? And if the true ground for continual secession be the restriction of freedom imposed by the Establishment, how is it that Nonconformists hold aloof from the Church in all our colonies, where the last remnant of Establishment has faded? "It would be as easy to restore the Heptarchy," says Mr. Allon, "as to bring back the Wesleyan Church to the bosom of the Establishment."