a time, for instance, when sight, when vision | but the one momentary state or mental came into the world-when an optic nerve, energy between the motive and the act of which, as a mere portion of matter, contains the muscle- a state called technically volinothing but the ordinary chemical elements, tion (a state which many think unnecessarily was to be endowed with a quite new property. introduced, because they trace the series diThis new property, this marvellous suscep rectly from desire to action) - there is tibility, this sensation of light and colour, only this point, this instant of mental activicomes before us as a pure creation- what ty, to abstract from, and to set over, the the Duke of Argyll would call a creation current of events. without means. If we insist upon a strict analogy between the operations of the human and the Divine will, we are in danger of resting our argument on the opinion which we hold on the nature of the human will. We have seen that the Duke of Argyll, in some brief extracts we have made, claims for it a certain supernatural character. Operating on nature, it is still not itself a part of that linked series of events which we call nature. And this view of the human will is necessary in order to make it a type of the creative will. But this position is encumbered with many difficulties. The greater number of men, we suspect, hardly know whether they hold this position or not; and a large section of philosophical thinkers have, in all ages, pronounced it untenable. The Duke of Argyll himself holds to the position, as it seems to us, very insecurely, if he really holds it at all. Whatever may be thought of human will, it is indisputable that man's action upon the world depends upon his knowledge of nature, and this knowledge appears to grow up according to established laws. In its initiation it is some operation of external objects on an internal susceptibility, and it grows with experience and memory, or what psychologists have always called the laws of association. Neither can the desires of man be supposed to share this supernatural character which is given to the will, unless we are prepared to assert that the hunger of a man, or of any animal whatever, is something supernatural. Thus knowledge and desire, the motives of the will, are presumed to be under the reign of law, or within what we may call the scientific cycle of events. On the other side of the will, so to speak, we have in the muscles a mechanism which it clearly belongs to physics to explain, however imperfect that explanation may still be. There is therefore left for us nothing The author quotes from Dr. Radcliffe's Lectures a theory of muscular action which may interest some of our readers, if they have not met with it before: "Recent investigations in physiology seem to favour the hypothesis that our muscles are the seat of two opposing Forces, each so adjusted as to counteract the other, and that this antagonism is itself so arranged as to enable us, by acting on one of these Let us see how the Duke of Argyll has dealt with his problem. We have looked through his volume for a passage which should contain the most explicit statement of what he holds upon the freedom of the will, and we select the following: "Is man's voluntary agency a delusion, or is it, on the contrary, just what we feel it to be, and is it only from misconception of its nature that we puzzle over its relation to law? We speak, and speak truly, of our wills being free; but free from what? It seems to be forgotten that freedom is not an absolute but a relative term. There that is to say, there is nothing existing in is no such thing existing as absolute freedom the world, or possible even in thought, which is absolutely alone, entirely free from inseparable relationship to some other thing or things. Freedom, therefore, is only intelligible as meaning the being free from some particular kind of restraint or of inducement to which other beings are subject. From what, then, is it that our wills are free? Are they free from the influence of motives? Certainly not. And what are motives? A motive is that which moves or tends to move, the mind in a particular direction. "But here we come upon the great difficulty which besets every attempt to reduce to system the laws or forces which operate on the mind of man. It is the immense, the almost boundless, variety and number of them. This variety corresponds with the variety of powers with which his mind is gifted. For pre-established force, whether in the material or the moral relations are necessary to the effect of every world. Special forces operate upon special forms of matter, and except upon these they exert no action whatever. The polar force of magnetism acts on different metals in different degrees, and there is a large class of substances which are almost insensible to its power. In like manner there are a thousand things that exercise an attractive power on the mind of a civilised man, One forces, to regulate the action of the other. force -an elastic or contractile force-is supposed to be inherent in the muscular fibre; another forcethat of animal electricity in statical conditionholds the contractile force in check; and the relaxed, or rather the restful condition of the muscle when not in use, is due to the balance so maintained. When, through the motor nerves, the will orders the muscles into action, that order is enforced by a discharge of the electrical force, and upon this discharge the contractile force is set free to act, and does accordingly produce the contraction which is desired." which would exercise no power whatever on the our author on this difficult theme, it is mind of a savage. And in this lies the only merely to point out the danger of resting difference between the subjection to law under our great theological argument on one view which the lower animals are placed and the sub- of the human will-namely, that which jection to law which is equally the condition of mankind. Free will, in the only sense in which supposes it to be an agency out of the order this expression is intelligible, has been errone- which the rest of creation observes. ously represented as the peculiar prerogative of But the will of the lower animals is as free as ours. A man is not more free to go to the right hand or to the left than the eagle, or the wren, or the mole, or the bat. The only difference is that the will of the lower animals is acted upon by fewer and simpler motives. Hence it is that the conduct and choice of animals that is, the decision of their will under given conditions can be predicted with almost perfect certainty." - P. 328. Then follows an eloquent description of the loftier as well as more numerous motives to which man is subject, or rather we should say, of which he is capable. But what we have quoted stands complete in itself. It is only, it seems, from the greater subtlety and variety of his motives that the conduct of man is less easily predicted than the conduct of the mole or the mollusc. We need not enter into a close examination of this passage. The few italics we have inserted will be sufficient to guide the attention of one practised in these controversies, To speak of freedom as matter of degree is at once to desert the lofty position of the uncaused will. The reader will perceive at a glance that the account here given of the freedom of the will is very much like that which he has often read under the title of philosophical necessity. If the knowledge or desires of man are not out of the reign of law, and if they are paramount over the will, what is left for us, in man, to place beside or above nature? What becomes of that supernatural power which was approved of in Dr. Bushnell? or that spontaneity which Professor Tyndall was rebuked for overlooking? "There is no art but nature makes that art." On this we are all agreed. Then some one adds, "And the artist too." Here disputes arise. Well, let us even grant that the human artist himself is but a part of the great mechanism of the universe; this artist has been made to think. He can in his thought, and he says to himself, This embrace the past, the present, the future, whole of things of which I am a part, must have in it, or over it, a Power, a Being who has a faculty like this with which I feel myself endowed, but of an indescribably higher character. He sees that the remote in space, and the remote in time, form one planthat is, one thought. One of the earliest chapters in this essay is occupied with a variety of definitions of the term Law. We did not engage ourselves in an examination of these Definitions, for we felt persuaded that if we did we should never get beyond that early chapter, so intricate were the discussions in which they involved us. But there is one of these Definitions- the fourth-which we cannot conclude without refering to, because it is calculated to lead to some confusion of thought. This Fourth Definition runs thus: - the "And so we come upon another sense Fourth sense in which Law is habitually used in science, and this perhaps the commonest and most habitual of all. It is used to designate not merely an observed order of facts, not merely the bare abstract idea of Force, not tained measures of operation, but a number of merely individual Forces according to ascerForces in the condition of mutual adjustmentthat is to say, as combined with each other and We have no desire at present to enter fitted to each other for the attainment of special into a more elaborate discussion of this in- ends. The whole science of mechanics, for exterminable question, still less have, we any ample, deals with Law in this sense, with natwish to criticise our author with the least ural Forces as related to Purpose and subserseverity because he manifests some indecis- vient to the discharge of function. And this is ion on a question whereon many of our best the highest sense of all-Law in this sense bethinkers Lave honestly confessed themselves ing more perfectly intelligible to us than in any at fault. Some men have been held in other, because, although we know nothing of the real nature of Force, even of that Force equipoise between what seemed two oppo- which is resident in ourselves, we do know for site truths till they brought themselves to what ends we exert it, and the principle that the desperate conclusion that it was the duty governs our devices for its use. That princiof the philosopher to believe them both! ple is Combination for the accomplishment of PurThere were, they concluded, certain cases pose.' in which the only right or possible belief was a belief in contradictory propositions! Now, throughout his essay the Duke of If we notice the obscurity or vacillation of Argyll habitually speaks of the divine Mind or Power employing the Laws, balancing, new species is, indeed, according to his theory, opposing, combining them, for given purposes. Here the very purpose itself is included in the significance of the term Law. In this sense there could be no dealing with laws as means for a purpose the law and the purpose are one. as well as with the older theories of develepment, simply an unusual birth. The bond of connection between allied specific and generic Forms is, in his view, simply the bond of Inheritance. But Mr. Darwin does not pretend to have discovered any law or rule according to which new Forms have been born from old Of course the Duke of Argyll is not re- Forms. He does not hold that outward condisponsible for the varieties of meaning he tions, however changed, are sufficient to acfinds attached to any popular word. But is count for them. His theory seems to the term Law" habitually used in science" be far better than a mere theory- to be an esin the sense of this Fourth Definition? tablished scientific truth in so far as it ac"Combination for the accomplishment of counts, in part at least, for the success, and esPurpose" may be everywhere apparent in tablishment, and spread of new Forms when they the universe, and in that sense be the law have arisen. But it does not even suggest the of the universe. But what is scientifically which, such new Forms are introduced. Natlaw under which, or by which, or according to understood by laws, and what the present ural Selection can do nothing except with the writer generally understands by them, are materials presented to its hands. Strictly those fixed relations or invariable sequences speaking, therefore, Mr. Darwin's theory is not which are found alike in every combination, a theory on the Origin of Species at all, but which are never departed from, whatever only a theory on the causes which lead to the be the purpose. We make abstraction from relative success or failure of such new forms as every individual purpose in order to form may be born into the world." the conception of them. It is the same law of gravity whether a stone falls to the earth or a planet is retained in its orbit. It is the same law of affinity whether the carbon and oxygen unite in the lungs for the purposes of respiration, or in the candle before us for the purpose of illumination. It is in the sense of these wide generalisations that the term Law is "habitually used in sci ence." The criticism is not quite correct. So far as the doctrine, or fact, is concerned, of Natural Selection, Mr. Darwin's book af fords, it is true, no theory of the origin of species. But we find this in his great and favourite speculation that the higher or later species have been born from their predecessors by some law of growth applicable to life in general. Coupled with the law of From our stand-point of philosophy or Inheritance, there is some law of Accession of theology, if you will we are very so- and Modification. Their conjoint operalicitous to keep in view that the laws of tion leads to that development of related science are just these generalisations and nothing more. Law on the theory of creation, or with relation to a Creator is nothing more than repetition; a certain uniformity in the acts of God; sustained uniformities, with ever new varieties of combination. "In his treatment of the great theme of creation, our author naturally comes in contact with the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection. Of this he gives a fair and enlightened estimate. As he justly observes, they were the opponents of the theory who vaguely extended its application, giving it a scope which the author of it never dreamt of. "It has not," says the Duke of Argyll, "been sufficiently observed that the theory of Mr. Darwin does not even profess to trace the origin of new Forms to any definite law. His theory gives an explanation, not of the processes by which new Forms first appear, but only of the processes by which, when they have appeared, they acquire a preference over others, and thus become established in the world. A and yet diversified forms of life which the naturalist has to study. He finds species fixed by the law of inheritance; he also finds them advancing one beyond the other, as if, at certain stages, the law of inheritance were supplemented by some law of further growth. Such law of progressive development, it will be said, we know nothing of. But in the same sense that this is true, it is equally true that we know nothing of the law of Inheritance. That the seed of a plant reproduces in exactness lineaments the parent plant which dropped it to the ground, is not less a mystery because it is incessantly repeated. When we reflect upon it, this exactness of reproduction, to the precise curve or indentation of every leaf, to the most delicate pencilling of every petal, stands just as much in need of explanation as this other fact- if observation warrant it to be a fact that, from time to time, that cell we call a seed receives some modification in the parent plant, owing to which it more than reproduces its progenitor. As to the phrase Natural Selection, we are not surprised that it has called forth some objection. It seems to imply that the struggle for existence really selects which kind of animal is to continue and which is to disappear. Whereas the struggle for existence only carries into execution a Selection that was made when the stronger, or the more favourably endowed animal, was called into existence. Setting aside the claims of theology for a moment, and averlooking the inappropriateness of applying the term Selection to the operations of nature, it is the progressive law of development that has really decided which kind of animal shall survive. For it cannot surely be the method of nature to give out blindly, as it were, from time to time, all possible varieties, without any law of successive or progressive development (a law in harmony with the rest of creation), and leave it simply to the actual state of things to decide which of her new forms shall hold its ground. The expression Natural Selection becomes still more irrelevant when we refer this law of progressive development to the Creative Intelligence, which alone can really have selected. But the expression as used by Mr. Darwin does not necessarily imply any more than this, that the struggle for existence carries out a selection already made: the stronger, or the more ingenious, or the better adapted animal, came prepared to part explain that want of complete consistency, or of perfect decision, which we have alluded to, and which slightly, and only slightly, detracts from the merits of the performance. From the Spectator. EDGAR QUINET'S REVOLUTION.* THIS is the noblest work yet published on its great subject. It is not, nor pretends to be, a history. It is but a study upon a history, needing, to be fully appreciated, some familiarity with the history itself. But beside it Carlyle's French Revolution is but as a magic lantern to a great thoughtful picture. It would be vain to seek even in Carlyle's pages for anything more vivid than M. Quinet's sketch of a day's work of the Convention (Book xv., ch. iii.), but it is only the highest prose-poetry, without a particle of stage effect. There is not a catch-word through the whole two volumes. Whilst the English force-worshipper can dismiss September massacres with a warning to "blockheads" not to "shriek," and the fallen Girondins with the stigma of " pedants," M. Quinet stops over those to show that they were only possible through the servility of mind engendered by previous despotism, and over the others to point out that the Girondins were 66 lic," failing which it must fail. And througha necessary organ of the Repubout the whole work breathes the feeling which Mr. Carlyle, in his restless hunt after heroes, each succeeding one less worthy than the last, becomes more and more incapable of comprehending, that (to use M. Quinet's own words)" Democracy has need of justice." There is a race of Red Indians living upon game. On the same soil is introduced a race of men more prospective in their thoughts, more observant and ingenious, who cultivate the earth. These cut down the forests and grow wheat. The Red man disappears. Is it the struggle for existence that has selected which of these two shall possess the soil? The selection was made It is difficult to give a satisfactory idea to when the more intelligent race was intro- the reader of a work so truly individual duced. Yet, in common parlance, and that it stands really by itself. If we looked without any disparagement to this the real to its intellectual character only, Montesselection, we may still speak of the struggle quieu's Grandeur et Décadence des Romains for subsistence between them deciding would be the nearest parallel. But there which shall remain and which shall depart. is a solemn height of purpose, a depth of perThere are other interesting topics can-sonal feeling about M. Quinet, which render vassed in the Duke of Argyll's book; but such a parallel wholly superficial. On the we will not break new ground. We have adhered to the leading idea of the work, and by so doing secured some kind of unity to our own notice of it. We ought, perhaps, to add that the essay appeared originally in that very spirited periodical Good Words.' It is highly creditable to that magazine that it should give its readers a composition of this sterling character. This mode of publication may also probably in 6 whole, and great as are the contrasts between the style and manner of the Frenchman and those of the Roman on the one hand, or the modern Italian on the other, it is difficult not to feel that the former's two next of kin on either side are rather Tacitus and Dante. There is in all three the *La Revolution. Par Edgar Quinet. Paris: Librairie Internationale. 1865. 2 vols. same proud looking down of a great spirit | Crawl before that beast crawling on its myriad over the miseries and the degeneracy of his feet? That is not my faith. What should I people; stung often to bitterness, seldom if do with such a god? Take me back to the ever stooping to grief. The Frenchman ibises and necklaced serpents of the Nile." has the high poetical feeling of the Italian, but not his fiery hates, his faith, or his love; he has much of the Roman's stoical endurance, he is self-wrapped equally, almost equally forlorn of hope; he has of his own what the Roman would have disdained, what the Italian could only cling to when raised into doctrines, theories, or to use his own term, des idées. Put Tacitus into nineteenth-century France, give him, instead of his old hereditary feelings of Roman justice, des idées, would he have written much otherwise than this, which concludes the work? "But, you will say, your ideas have not had force on their side. They have not triumphed. You are one of the vanquished. I deny it. I remain alone, it is true, but I have had this good luck, that losing all, I have seen all my presentiments realized, all my warnings confirmed, all my principles consecrated and crowned by my voluntary ruin. That is not being vanquished." And yet neither God nor Christ is in this book, so sternly truthful, so loftily and sharply true in its judgments of past and present. The Being and Fatherhood of God, the Incarnation of Christ, the Eternal Sacrifice of redeeming love, the perpetual inspiration of the Holy Spirit, are not, for Edgar Quinet, the facts upon which stands the Universe. For him "there are three or four religious ideas spread upon the earth which give birth to the whole civil world.. Rocked from birth to death in the cradle which is called life, man will draw from the Unknown marvels which shall never cease; there will always be questions which science will not be able to answer. That mys tery will form the inexhaustible ground of the religions of the future." This great and fearless thinker, after proving in the clearest manner the absolute need of a religion for breathing a soul into the great crises of a nation's life, has nothing after all to point to but the worship of the Unknown God. In using the word "theories," it is by no means intended that M. Quinet is one of The weakest faith could not indeed be those, far too frequent amongst bis countryshaken by M. Quinet's book, so genuine and men, who set theories in the place of facts, impartial are his sympathies with all that is or square facts to them. earnest and true. Although he repeatedly On the contrary, he stands pre-eminent among writers on the insists on the fault committed by the RevoFrench Revolution for candour and impar-lution in not actively suppressing the Rotiality, for reverence for historic truth. man Catholic religion, it is doubtful whethWhat is meant is, that whilst he rises to the er even a Roman Catholic would not be truest ewpia or contemplation, he cannot, strengthened in his faith by M. Quinet's by looking upwards, reach to a living faith. Of no contemporary Frenchman, perhaps, could it be more truly said, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." The keynote to the whole work is the declaration that the French Revolution failed because it was not religious as well as political. Nothing can be finer than his dissection of Rousseau's famous "Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard," that root of modern French religious falsehood, of which M. Renan's Jesuitical boudoir-atheism is but one of the latest fruits. He bitterly laments the nullity of the Protestant element in France in the hour of political trial. He declares that science cannot replace religion. He uncloaks the spiritual tyranny of St. Simonism and Comtism. He bursts out as follows against the last new goddess: "Well, they say to me, then worship Humanity. A curious fetish, truly! I have seen it too close. What! kneel before that which is on its knees before any triumphant force? profoundly true remarks on the results of the Vendéan war, in which the apparent victors were really the vanquished, and not only left their opponents in possession of those religious rites for defence of which they had taken up arms, but in a few years fet came themselves to bow once more to the |