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soul from the long sleep of a traditional faith, to face-and-face communion with the highest truth. We well remember with what pleasure we were swept along by its majestic current, when we first launched upon it, several years ago; and how hard it was to check the almost irresistible impulse to write to the author, and inform her of our admiration for her book. At the time of its appearance, it was reviewed, at length, in the "Examiner;" and, from the praise there given, we cannot find it in our head, and much less in our heart, to subtract the smallest particle. And yet it is not for the most obvious characteristics of the book that we now value it most highly. It might be far less strong than it is in its opposition to sensational psychology and the doctrine of utility, and our total impression of the book would not be very different from what it now is. Miss Cobbe does well to insist, beforehand, that the value of her work does not depend on the correctness of her metaphysics. But sometimes she seems to forget this, and to speak as if the moral welfare of the race were staked on certain theories, which failing of acceptance, the reign of conscience would be over. Therefore it is that we are often led to wish that Miss Cobbe had developed the ideas contained in this book, after having seen more of the world, instead of in her solitude, before the rare experience of men and women which she afterward enjoyed, had deepened and enlarged her character, and humanized the various aspects of her thought. Hardly could any experience add much to her already rich and glowing consciousness of God or to her abstract faith in man. But, if we are not much mistaken, she has a great deal more faith in men and women now than she had ten years ago. A little more of this would have dispelled the fears which sometimes haunt her pages, that virtue is at the mercy of our metaphysics. For ourselves, we believe that every thinker, thinking honestly, will add something to the truth, however hostile to our views of truth at any given time his theories may be. Let Bain and Mill and Spencer say their strongest word: if they are seeking for the truth, it will not lead them or their followers astray. We do not believe that any man has been made worse by sitting at the fect of these men, or ever will be, though their philoso

phy is any thing but intuitive. Let their unwearying analysis go on; and, in whatever direction it may carry them, it ought not to be doubted, that a grander synthesis will be the ultimate result. And, in the mean time, we are sure that every earnest moralist, untrammelled by tradition, will be in practical accord with every other. In given circumstances, Frances Power Cobbe and John Stuart Mill would act with a strange unanimity, considering that their theories of morals seem to be so far apart.

The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life; and it is the spirit which pervades "Intuitive Morals" that impresses us most deeply with its worth. Of the main truth of its philosophy we are profoundly convinced, and believe that the most that cerebral psychology can do, with its magnificent array, is to force Spiritualism* back on its reserves, strengthened by which it shall again sweep every thing before it. But the sublime unselfishness, that makes these pages radiantly beautiful, is quite independent of the philosophy which they set forth. "Do right for the right's sake; love God and goodness because they are good," this is the constantly-recurring admonition for which her book has been so highly prized. And in its practical bearings there is no philosophy that can break its force. And indeed there is no philosophy, independent of religion, that pretends to do this. It is only when religion of an unworthy type steals for a time the garment of philosophy, and with it tries to hide its naked ugliness, that "enlightened selfishness" is set forth as the highest rule of life. Against this rule, in all its shifting forms, the chapters of "Intuitive Morals" wage a continuous, unsparing, and successful war.

Not the least valuable portions of the book are those criticisms of current theological conceptions, which, for the most part, are introduced as notes, expanding and illustrating the body of the work. Our readers, for the most part, may have got so bravely over these conceptions, that they may not appreciate the force of the remarks by which they are here overthrown; for, when they are once overthrown in one's own

*Not Spiritism, which is the most materialistic movement of the age.

mind, it seems as if they ought to fall in other minds by their own weight. But it is very seldom that they do. The strongest arguments are oftener of no avail, else would there be no Calvinists upon the earth to-day; for, logically, they have been routed more than a thousand times. But, when arguments can hope to avail any thing, these of Miss Cobbe's ought to be very mighty for the tearing down of strongholds where the various forms of orthodoxy are entrenched. Sooner or later, every distinctive doctrine of supernatural orthodoxy gets its deathblow at her hands. But orthodoxy has a great deal of that convenient ignorance which sometimes makes a general so successful in the field. It never knows when it is whipped.

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The promise of "Intuitive Morals" was, that it should be followed by two other volumes, one, dealing with the social and personal duties of man; the other, with his duties towards God., Only the second half of this promise has been kept. The first half has been withdrawn. But what would have constituted a very important chapter in this part of her work, had it been written, has been worked up into one of the best essays in her "Studies, Ethical and Social," on "The Rights of Man and the Claims of Brutes," an earnest and admirable discussion of a question that receives almost as little theoretical as practical consideration, and that is indeed very little. The fault of this essay, as of several others, is that it threatens never to get fairly under way. We are kept so long standing in the vestibule, that, when we are admitted to the house, we are in a better mood to criticise than to enjoy. And highly as we should prize a complete work from Miss Cobbe, on the great subject of which this essay forms a part, it is not as if Herbert Spencer had not written "Social Statics," the most popular of all his works, which opens with an onslaught on the "greatesthappiness" philosophy, which can hardly be surpassed in vigor and conclusiveness.

"Religious Duty" does not impress us as a book well calculated, upon the whole, to do the work for which it is designed; i.e., to make religious duty more abound. If any subject, from its very nature, demands a rich and flowing treatment, it is this; but, unfortunately, it is just here that Miss Cobbe sinks

to the most prosaic level that she anywhere attains. Her style is nowhere else so hard and cold and unimaginative as in this treatise. The feeling we have always had concerning it is, that it was not shaped in the same mood in which it was conceived. The metal must have waited too long for the mould. For the substance of the book is far superior to its form; and this fact goes far to reconcile us to the hardness of the style. Creation, Henry James informs us, is giving body to a form; a queer notion, which seems less queer the more we think of modern literature, so much of which has form and nothing else. Better formless substance than unsubstantial form. The kernel of Miss Cobbe's book will pay the reader for his trouble with its tough and rather tasteless shell. It is full of excellent discriminations. Some of the words which she defines as "religious faults" or "offences" seem to us hardly worth saving. As the devil ought not to have all the best tunes, so ought he not to have all the best words; but the sooner that some go to him the better. The critical portion of this book is very skilfully done. With admirable precision, the writer sticks her pen into this or that time-consecrated bladder, and lets its airy nothingness escape; then loads the word or phrase thus ventilated with something solider, and hurls it whence it came. By this process, a very deep and noble meaning is many times incorporated in a word before quite meaningless, or charged with meanings wholly bad. But the object of this book is less to clarify men's thoughts and definitions than to induce the sentiment of religious duty; and, to obtain this object, it does not impress us as being singularly well-fitted. For that, it is too critical and cold. For the main idea of the work,-viz., that our heavenly affections are rooted in morality, - we have nothing but sympathy. But it is in our personal and social morality that these affections have their root; and, when once this part of ethics has been duly enforced, our attitude to God can be better represented under the aspects of love and need, than under the sterner aspect of duty. Piety is the love of God; and, as such, it works from the centre, not from the circumference, of the soul. It is our duty to admire the sunset splendor and the rolling sea; but not much is gained by

insisting upon this. Develop our æsthetic faculty, and we cannot help admiring all such things. So, with the development of social virtue, the thought of God grows mighty in the soul; and henceforth the duties which we owe to him are swallowed up in joy, and become so many needs, not merely asking, but demanding, satisfaction.

Of some of the articles contained in "Studies, Ethical and Social" and "Hours of Work and Play," we have already spoken. They contain many papers of great interest, and some that show a keener sense of form than any of her other works. The first two papers in the "Studies" are, however, most directly in her line, and are the noblest which the volume contains. The first of these, especially, entitled "Christian Ethics and the Ethics of Christ," is thoroughly excellent. It seizes with great force the salient points of Christ's morality, and contrasts them very sharply with the conventional Christian ethics of to-day. This is the ground where she has always been, and always will be, most at home; and while we heartily rejoice, that, in her "hours of play," she can produce such pleasant papers as some that are contained in these two volumes, and would not have her narrow down such hours too carefully, yet, the more we think of it, the more convinced we are that she had better give her "hours of work" to ethical subjects, or such as are intimately connected therewith.

Miss Cobbe has been engaged for some time, until recently, in writing leaders for a daily paper which is owned by the Marquis of Westminster. And that she is still a monarchist in her theory of government, must be inferred from certain things that she has written. But, from her sympathy with us in our great struggle, it was pleasant to infer that she had otherwise complete faith in government "for the people, by the people," in her own land. Nor would we be too hasty in concluding that she has not; for the object of the paper which she edited is to apply intuitive morals to social rather than to political affairs. For the sake of her philosophy, we trust that she is all right in this matter; remembering, as we do, the rule of Jesus, that

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