informed that the buildings had never been cleaned, and at the late census taken it was found that buildings destined to hold at the most 43,000, had been forced to accommodate 63,000. Even the Moscow Gazette complains that grammar-boys have been kept for three years in these frightful places without trial, and, when at last tried, found guilty of only trivial offence and sentenced to light punishment, after having, in that dreary waiting, been reduced to mere skeletons in body and spirit of their former selves. General Melikoff also proposes to supply Russia's serious need of a middle class by pardoning the eleven million Russian dissenters. These differing sects, cemented by a common struggle with restrictions that have stimulated their intellects, energy and ambition, form in the general departments of trade and industry, the very sinews of the nation.

Religious education in the schools has been confided to the charge of lay teachers.

Such, briefly, are the characteristics and some of the more salient features of General Melikoff's administration, indicating not only his broad judicious grasp of the present situation, but that he deliberately aims at an organic and peaceful preparation of Russia for transition from absolutism to a constitutional power. It is no longer imminently likely that he will fall by order of the Executive Committee, though the volunteer and unauthorized assassin may at any moment appear; it is from the court cabal, by the foes as it were of his own household, that General Melikoff's life and career are menaced. But his work, if he cannot carry it to completion, is nevertheless too well begun to be undone, nor can it fail of permanent beneficent results, and for it he deserves the admiration and gratitude of the civilized world.

May 24, 1880.

AXEL GUSTAFSON.

ART. II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF FINAL CAUSES.

1. First Principles of a New System of Philosophy. BY HERBERT SPENCER. London: 1869.

2. The Physical Basis of Life-An Essay. BY THOMAS HUXLEY, F. R. S. London : 1870.

3. Problems of Life and Mind. BY GEO. HENRY LEWES. London : 1874.

4. La Philosophie des Causes Finales. PAR M. E. VACHEROT. Revue des Deux Mondes.

Tome XVI. Paris: 1876.

Troisième Période.

"Les activités du monde sont le reflet des idées de Dieu."-PAPILLON.

THE belief in the existence of a Supreme Being is apparently as old as man. So generally held is it under one form or another, among every people, that atheists, in the strict sense of the word, may be considered exceptional existences. And yet, whenever the attempt has been made to formulate the grounds of this belief, theologians have not succeeded in giving general satisfaction. If we examine the current arguments on the subject they will be found not only unsatisfactory from a scientific stand-point, but wholly inadequate to account for the prevalence of the belief among rude and ignorant peoples. "Whatever exhibits marks of design must have had an intelligent author," is the substance of all the argument on natural theology, and is the argument which is supposed to have led the ancient Greek and the North American Indian, the savants of Europe and the savages of Africa to a belief in, and worship of, a Supreme Being. The reasons which have led to so great a unanimity of opinion on this subject must possess more of an instinctive

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character than is generally conceded. to the highest or lowest order of intellect this argument of the schools would seem to possess little real weight. What can a South-Sea Islander whose highest idea of design consists in rubbing two sticks together to produce fire, or in poisoning an arrow to produce death, infer from the adaptations of nature, the fitting of organs to function, the modifications of structure to suit changing conditions? On the other hand, the recent developments of science have raised the more advanced thinkers above this idea of design in the ordinary sense of the word. To the scientist of today the world presents itself as the necessary outgrowth of forces to which he can assign no beginning, and for the origin of which he seeks no explanation. Nature is all in all to him. He knows no power outside of it; he seeks no explanation beyond it: he tries merely to understand it.

Given the forces of light, heat, electricity, etc., physical phenomena are explainable. If there is such a force as chemical affinity, no additional power is requisite to account for an explosion of gunpowder under certain conditions. The attraction of gravity needs no outside assistance to hold our planetary system together. So of every conceivable physical phenomenon. Whatever power may exist in the universe, it manifests itself in physical phenomena only under the form of physical force: and of such force only can intelligent people take cognizance. This is admitted by the most orthodox thinkers; and indeed it is tacitly assumed in every physical inquiry. For, if there is any power in the universe capable of suspending the action of physical forces, or which ever suspends them; if, for example, gunpowder may, or may not, explode under the same conditions; if an unsupported body may, or may not, fall to the ground; if any physical event may, or may not, happen in accordance with physical lawthen there is not a single conclusion of science which is worth the paper on which it is written. on which it is written. All these conclusions assume as a fundamental postulate the absolute uniformity of nature that what occurs once will, under similar conditions, occur again. They assume, in other words, that the only

power with which we have to deal in physical phenomena is that which manifests itself under the various forms of physical energy; and that this Power, whatever you may choose to call it, follows invariable laws in its activity.

Were the forces of nature suddenly to stop their action, leaving as it were their shell-their fossilized remains-if such a conception be possible; and were this shell submitted to the inspection of some intelligent creature, he would certainly conclude, as he traced the adaptation of the parts to each other, that it was made with a purpose, that it was the creation of intelligence. But nature is not a dead, inert mass; it is full of life and activity. It is not a fossil-the handiwork of an intelligence which has departed; it is an active, living power-a manifestation of present intelligence, the origin of which is not in question, but whose nature and character we seek to understand. Its adaptations are not the work of an intelligence lying back of it, or above it. They are of the same sort as the intelligent acts of our fellow creatures. They do not show an intelligent author, but an intelligent actor.

The argument from design, therefore, is unsatisfactory from every point of view. It does not address itself with any force to the great mass of mankind who are steeped in ignorance, and it is inconsistent with scientific inquiry. It proposes an explanation which to the ignorant is unmeaning, and to the learned is beside the question-an explanation which science utterly ignores. It is not the evidence of design, but the evidence of Power, which has given rise to the notion of God. It is the manifestation throughout nature of energies distinct from those of our fellow creatures, it is the power exhibited in the storm and earthquake, that first impressed on benighted men the belief in a superhuman will-an explanation patent to the most ignorant, and irresistible to the most learned.

All effects within our experience require the expenditure of force. We never produce any physical change without the consciousness of effort. It is natural, therefore, and it is strictly logical, that when we perceive other similar changes occurring about us, not the result of animal agency, we should

attribute them to a similar cause-to the only one we know— Will. The object of all scientific inquiry, aside from a knowledge of the facts, as Prof. Tyndall declares, is to represent in thought how the phenomena occur. Referring to the phenomena of light and their hidden cause, he says: "To realize this subsensible world, if I may use the term, the mind must possess a certain pictorial power. It has to visualize the invisible. It must be able to form definite images of the things which that subsensible world contains; and to say that, if such or such a state of things exist in that world, then the phenomena which appear in ours must, of necessity, grow out of this state of things. If the picture be correct, the phenomena are accounted for; a physical theory has been enunciated which unites and explains them all." But, as we are limited for our materials to the data of experience, we cannot of course transcend that experience. When we attempt to conceive the energies of nature we are limited of necessity to the only form we know-volition.

This idea the evidence of will in the phenomena of nature-forms the theme of Dr. Carpenter's closing chapter in his Mental Physiology, and it is there fully explained and defended. A brief quotation, however, will suffice to give the gist of his remarks. He says the law of gravitation "is an expression of the fact that everywhere and under all circumstances, two masses of matter attract one another in certain definite ratios; and the term 'attract' implies that they are drawn together by a force similar to that which directly impresses itself upon our consciousness by the sense of effort we experience when we lift a pound-weight from the ground."* This cause, this power which manifests itself in natural phenomena, is, alike to all, the object of worship; it corresponds to the theologian's God. †

* Page 695.

"Le mouvement peut servir à mesurer," says M. Papillon, “non à expliquer la force. Il est aussi subordonné à celle-ci que la parole l'est à la pensée. En effet, le mouvement n'est autre chose que la suite des positions successives d'un corps dans différents points de l'espace. La force, au contraire, est la tendance, la tension qui détermine ce corps à passer continuellement de l'un à l'autre de ces points, c'est-à-dire la puissance par laquelle ce corps, considéré en un moment quelconque de sa course, diffère d'un corps identique en repos."—Revue des Deux Mondes, Seconde Période, Tome CV, p. 697.