NOTE.

THE POST-GLACIAL PERIOD.

Professor WARREN UPHAM, Assistant Geologist of the United States Geological Survey, in a paper "On the Cause of the Glacial Period," makes the following remarks:

"Measurements of the gorge and falls of St. Anthony show that the length of the post-glacial or recent epoch to have been about 8,000 years. From surveys of Niagara Falls, Mr. C. K. Gilbert thinks it to be 7,000 years, more or less.* From the rates of wave cutting along the sides of Lake Michigan, Dr. E. Andrews estimates it at not less than 7,500 years. Prof. Wright obtains a similar result from the rate of filling of kettle holes among the gravel knolls and ridges called kames. Prof. B. K. Emerson, from the rate of deposition of modified drift in the Connecticut Valley, thinks that the time cannot exceed 10,000 years. A similar estimate is formed from the study of the Lakes Bonneville and La Hontan. The last great rise was contemporaneous with the last extension of ice sheets. Prof. James Geikie maintains that man in Europe made neolithic implements before the recession of the ice sheet from Scotland, Denmark and the Scandinavian peninsula, and Prestwich suggests that the dawn of civilization in Egypt may have been coeval with the glaciation of north-western Europe, and D. Mackintosh cites the boulders in Wales and Yorkshire as proof that a period of not more than 6,000 years has elapsed.† Dr. Robert Bell refers to the preservation of the glacial striation and polishing. The striæ are as fresh looking as if the ice had left them only yesterday. According to the astronomical theory which Croll and James Geikie have advocated, the glacial period was from 240,000 to 80,000 years ago, but it is wholly untenable in view of the geological evidence."‡

* See also Victoria Institute Transactions, on these Surveys, vol. xix, p. 93. + In a paper read before the Victoria Institute; Trans., vol. xix, p. 73. † American Antiquarian.

ORDINARY MEETING.*

SIR J. RISDON BENNETT, M.D., F.R.S., IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed.

The following Paper was then read by the Author :

ON HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY. By the Right Hon. Lord GRIMTHORPE,

I

AM asked once more to write a paper for your Transactions, and this subject was suggested to me, for the second time, as one that had not yet been discussed here. But, since this paper was mostly in type, a friend has sent me one of your early volumes (IV), in which it was discussed at great length as long ago as 1869, which may account for its being forgotten. This is a sad practical commentary on one of the laudatory estimates of Dr. Irons's papers at the time, that they would rank with Butler's Analogy. He wrote an "Analysis of Human Responsibility." in three successive and most elaborate papers, which, with the discussions on them, fill a large part of that volume. If this paper of mine is too short, I must say I think Dr. Irons's "wood can hardly be seen for the trees." Or, in less figurative language, his papers were so complicated, as well as analytic, and his reasoning so abstract, that if this were (what it is not) an abstract of them in the legal sense, there would still be an excuse for writing it; though I do not think I should have done so if I had known that I had been

* Jan. 5, 1891.

so anticipated. Those discussions, however, are valuable to me now, because I find that the only person who disputed the author's main arguments or conclusion was one who confessed-not at all in the offensive and insolent language of some atheists-that his difficulty remained, that there was and could be no proof of the God on whom a future life depends. I had already written what you will see farther on, on the necessary connexion between the two doctrines. Mr. Holyoake's speech on that occasion still more convinces. me that it is all but a waste of time to try to prove future responsibility independently of the proof of revelation, or what is called the Evidences of Christianity. I have not seen anything else in those papers or speeches which suggests any material addition to or alteration of what I had written before.

I have also found a paper written for the Christian Evidence Society in 1873 by Prebendary Row, who took part in those discussions here, and I am sorry to hear is very ill now, concluding: "My whole argument therefore stands thus: Mankind have asserted with unanimous voice that certain actions are virtuous and vicious. But they can be neither unless men are voluntary agents. All voluntary agency involves responsibility. Men therefore feel themselves responsible." He rightly combats the ordinary attempts of atheistic writers to make out that we are not voluntary agents, which I should think never persuaded anybody yet that he is not a voluntary agent, except under absolute compulsion, or some motive which he is literally, and not only figuratively, unable to resist, to do something dangerous to himself; in which case he is deemed, both by the law of England and common sense, irresponsible for his actions, or a lunatic. Such cases as that have nothing to do with the question of free will in persons possessed of proper reasoning faculties, nor have any other manifest exceptions: nor ought we ever to be frightened by the common claptrap difficulty of what is called "drawing the line" between normal and exceptional cases, either by abstract rules (which

never of any use) or in particular instances, where different juries might guess differently whether a man is in his right mind or not.

Dr. Row also exposed the fallacy of the late Mr. Buckle's paradoxical conceit, that, because all human actions which are reducible to statistics show approximate averages, or that about so many people per million generally commit murder or suicide or matrimony in a year at present, there

fore it is a law of nature that each man who does so cannot help it, though the vast majority do help it-an absurdity which only needs stating in this naked way to become ashamed; and yet I will try to shame it a little more by applying Buckle's own mathematical test to it. It is certain that 1 in 100,000 people (or whatever is the number) will kill themselves generally in a year. That means, in mathematics, that the chances are 100,000 to 1 against any one man doing it. Buckle called that a necessity that all who do must. It is absolutely certain that in the long run an unbiassed halfpenny will as often come heads as tails. What is the certainty about each toss? The only certainty is that one is likely as the other. And so one might go on with any number of illustrations of such a piece of nonsense. No materialist ever treated himself as being a machine, or anybody else over whom he has power; and every man is a hundred times surer that he can generally do as he likes than anyone who has muddled his head with either misapplied physics or unintelligible metaphysics can be of any or all arguments to the contrary. I say "muddled with physics" as well as with metaphysics, because using physical facts to prove things entirely beyond them is mere darkening of counsel without knowledge, and making a pretence of omniscience under the guise of humility and agnosticism.

Still, I think Dr. Row's statement of his argument did leave a gap unfilled. Indeed I always distrust those neat epigrammatic statements which have the appearance of settling difficult questions in two or three lines of axioms and deductions. Generally it is the materialistic party that is fondest of them. I have exposed several of them in former papers here and elsewhere, and need not advert to them now. I am afraid his assertion that "mankind have unanimously asserted that certain actions are virtuous and vicious" will hardly carry all the weight he put upon it, either in fact or logic. If it were true that even all civilised mankind were agreed as to the virtue or vice of every action (not of certain actions), that might be a safe basis to work upon; but conscience is far too variable and dependent on external circumstances to be accepted as a basis for this demonstration. Certainly no opponent will accept it. Nor do I see how even that proves that we shall ever be held responsible by any power beyond human vengeance. Unfortunately, however, the assumed universal agreement is not universal. Some things which no Christian has the least doubt about being virtuous or vicious are

D

denied to be so by some people who set up for moralists, or who choose to neglect or to do them without setting up for anything except "being as good as their neighbours, which depends on "who is their neighbour," and, if true, proves nothing except that vice is common in their society, and therefore more noxious to the world than if they were solitary offenders. At what age does uneducated conscience begin to convince children that absolute selfishness is not the true guide of life: nay does it ever convince some educated adults?

So I cannot accept conscience as an assumable proposition to base responsibility on. You know that Paley took this view, and I think proved it in his usual lucid way, in his Moral Philosophy, cap. v. An ingenious writer has sent me a paper called "Ratio Rationis," professing to refute it, by dividing morals into our own and other people's, and saying that the province of conscience is not to discover what is right, but to warn us to do what we believe to be right: "The question for my conscience is how far my present conduct tallies with my present light;" which obviously comes to this, in its simplest terms: Conscience only tells us that we ought to do what we believe we ought. So it is quite right and virtuous, and a thing to be rewarded here and hereafter, to act on the rule that selfishness is the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, until he is taught better and convinced that that light is darkness; and if he should be seduced into an act of benevolence against his interest, his conscience will rebuke him. I daresay something will; but a diabolic or natural conscience of that kind is not a very solid basis for a doctrine of responsibility. So that queer piece of reasoning only ends in affirming, not contradicting, the great Senior Wrangler who wrote the Evidences of Christianity and Natural Theology, and could put more good reasoning, and more intelligible, into a page than most moral philosophy-makers in a dozen, or a volume. Dr. Row says: "Men therefore feel themselves to be responsible." It is no use saying "therefore" unless the conclusion as well as the premiss is a fact either demonstrable or self-evident. If it were a fact that all men feel themselves to be responsible, it would be a waste of time to write papers to prove it. It would indeed be not far from the truth to say that all men feel all other men to be responsible, and at any rate take care to treat them so, subject to reasonable excuses; and an excuse is only a mitigation, not a plea of not guilty. Every man