affords no legitimate inference as to the plan of the architect?-that an examination of the workshop of nature includes no notice of the models which have been set before her to copy?

Philoc. The workshop of nature! Is that the quarter to which we should look for the origin of man?

Philal. The very point I am so anxious to impress upon you. I look

to the plan of the architect for the origin of a house, not to the tools of the builder.

Philoc. Are we then twice removed from our Creator? Is creation so analogous to the laborious efforts of man?

Philal. Let me answer you in the words of Bacon: "For as in civil actions "he is the greater and deeper politique "that can make other men the instru"ments of his will and ends, and yet never acquaint them with his purpose, "... so is the wisdom of God more "admirable when nature intendeth one "thing, and Providence draweth forth "another, than if He had communicated "to particular creatures and motions "the characters and impressions of His "providence.

Philoc. But, tell me, how does your view of the theory admit of the exception which you claim for the case of man?

Philal. Because I believe it to be part of the plan of man laid down by the great Architect, that there should be that within him which, holding communion with the supernatural, raises him above the influence of mere natural powers.

Philoc. And does not that very fact supply a confutation of the theory? Nature, working by a system of antagonistic influences, produces an agent whose highest glory it is to set those influences at defiance. The typical man-the highest ideal of manhoodacts upon motives not only different from, but utterly opposed to those which have made him what he is. Must there not be some flaw in the premisses from which such a conclusion may be derived?

Philal. I see no reductio ad absur

dum in your inference. In crossing the barrier which separates matter from spirit, you introduce a new element, to which the former grounds of reasoning will no longer apply.

Philoc. But is it true that the theory of natural selection does apply to material creation alone? It professes, at least, to account for instinct; and it must be admitted that instinct and reason blend insensibly into each other. How then is it possible to draw any line which shall cut off man from the influences which have been omnipotent over his ancestors?

Philal. My dear Philocalos, I am far from asserting that that objection is unimportant; but I want you to feel that, in making it, you are transplanting the discussion to a region where the author of the hypothesis is not bound to follow you. All that he is bound to do, is to show that his hypothesis supplies an adequate explanation of all facts lying within the science which it professes to explain. For him to adjust it to other views of truth, would be as if the maker of this microscope had endeavoured to contrive such a combination of lenses as should allow of its being used, under certain circumstances, as a telescope. We may rest assured that, in the one case, our knowledge of the stars and the infusoria would suffer equally; and in the other, that we should have a medley of very poor moral philosophy, and very poor natural science.

Philoc. Without being prepared with a logical reply to such a vindication, I must confess that kind of argument is It seems always unsatisfactory to me. to me like saying that a certain proposition may be true in one language and not in another; surely, Truth is one harmonious whole.

Philal. Your objection is one with which I have the greatest sympathy. No doubt all the lines of Truth converge, but it is at too small an angle, and too vast a distance, for us to be able in all cases to perceive the tendency to unite. Moreover, it is the indispensable requisite of the man of science-not that he should ignore or forget this com

munity of direction in all the clues of Truth-but that he renounce any attempt at making his own investigations subordinate to the proof of that conclusion. I do not decide whether such a subject is capable of proof; I only say that, when the student of physical science undertakes it, he is renouncing his own proper study as effectually as the pilot who should. attempt to decide on the most favourable market for the goods with which his vessel is freighted. I must repeat in another form what I said just now.

You know it is a law of physiology that, as any animal ascends in the scale of being, all its organs become more and more specialized to their peculiar functions. Thus, the four hands of the monkey are used indifferently as organs of prehension or locomotion, while in man, at the summit of the scale, each function has its proper organ exclusively appropriated to it. Now this fact is the expression of a law which is universal. No machine which is adapted to two purposes will fulfil either of them so perfectly as one which should be constructed solely with a view to that one. No man who combines the professions of a lawyer and a physician will make so able a lawyer, so skilful a physician, as one who should have devoted his life to the study of either profession. And science, believe me, is not less exacting than physic or law. The researches of the man of science must not be cramped by fears of trespassing on the entangled boundary of a neighbouring domain. If he allow his course to be broken by claims on behalf of a superior authority to exclusive occupancy of the ground, not only will the powers be distracted which, when in perfect harmony, are not more than adequate to the work before them-not only will his step be feeble and uncertain on his own special province, but his conviction of the harmony of the creation will be destroyed; the suspicion, fatal to all science, will be forced upon him, that truth can ever be inconsistent with truth.

Philoc. Of course, truth can never be inconsistent with truth, but a partial

view of truth may be inconsistent with the whole. The statement of one fact, apart from others, may give as false an impression as the sense of sight might give of the external world, if it could not be corrected by that of touch.

Philal. But you do not, therefore, attempt to make the eye the medium of touch. You do not suppose there can be such a thing as an excess of sight. The impressions of the external world are truest when all the senses are in their fullest exercise, and, even if some are absent or feeble, you gain nothing by diminishing the rest. I do not cease to see that round table oblong when I look at it obliquely, by becoming shortsighted.

Philoc, What I cannot agree to, is that parcelling-out of truth into divisions, between which no communication is possible; least of all, when the instance is one which concerns the nature of man. That any ingenuous mind should deny an antagonism between his spiritual nature and any hypothesis which ignores his distinct creation-this I cannot readily believe.

Philal. There is an antagonism, I believe, in all the views of man's spiritual and physical nature. Let me illustrate what I mean by a fact of my own experience.

I have often thought, as I stood beside a death-bed-still more, when I was consulted by a patient for whom I foresaw that death-bed within the space of a few months-how strange is the opposition between the spiritual and bodily life of man. I see a fellowcreature on the point of being submitted to the most momentous change, but wholly ignorant of the brief period still allowed for preparation. To me, the contracted limits of the course by which my patient is separated from the great ordeal is matter of absolute certainty. And yet that knowledge, which for myself I should desire above many added years of life, I must not only not communicate to the one so deeply interested, but (within the limit of actual deception) studiously vithhold. I have undertaken to give advice with

reference to bodily health, and I feel, as I suppose you would feel in my place, no hesitation as to the neglect of any consideration, however superior in intrinsic importance, calculated to interfere with the object concerning which my advice is sought.

Philoc. No doubt you are called in as a physician, and you must not, as an honest man, act as a priest.

Philal. You have expressed in a few words the substance of what I have been urging all along. You cannot,

then, ask of the physician, in a larger sense, to act otherwise than as a physician?

Philoc. If, only, he does not forget that the priest has his appointed part also!

Philal. There is the danger of my profession, and still more that of my fellowstudents. I do not underrate it. But, just as I am certain that, in a world of order and law, it must be better for the whole being of man that one class should attend exclusively to his physical sufferings, so I believe that it is advantageous to truth, that one set of thinkers should attend exclusively to physical truths.

Philoc. Oh, Philalethes, I cannot answer such arguments otherwise than by the protest of my whole nature! If the study of the creation is to lead us away from the Creator; if the observation of law obliterates the view of the Lawgiver; if "ex majore lumine na"turæ et reseratione viarum sensûs "aliquid incredulitatis et noctis animis "nostris erga divina mysteria oboria"tur;" then, I can only say, the sooner that study is abandoned, the sooner that path is closed, the better.

Philal. A danger which I and my fellow-students cannot contemplate too anxiously! But for you, and men of your tastes and interests, it is needful to look to the other side of the question. You, who look at nature simply for the beauty of nature, have you ever reflected what a different world you would inhabit but for the labours of the man of science? I am not, of course, speaking of material advantage. But take the No. 8.-VOL. II.

oldest and most complete of the sciences -astronomy, and compare the objects which every night presents to our eyes, as seen with and without its illumination. What were they to the eye of the wisest man of antiquity? Read the description of the eight whorls of the distaff of the universe, in the Republic of Plato, and remember that where he saw this confusion of concentric whorls and unknown impulses, you explore depths of space the remoteness of which thought refuses to conceive, and find those abysses filled with innumerable worlds, moved by the same power which detaches the withered leaf from its stalk, which moulds the faintest streak of vapour that we can scarcely distinguish against the sky. That he needed no such symbol as the law of gravitation to embody a conviction of one ruling power which

"Spreads undivided, operates unspent”—

I readily believe; but, having that inward conviction, do we gain nothing by the outward type? In one word, does it make no difference whether we are shackled by a delusion of man, or in contact with an idea of God? Now this Divine idea is to you, and to men far less scientific than you, a material of thought, a belief which there is no more choice about receiving than there is about breathing oxygen. What was confused and indistinct to the finest genius of antiquity is orderly and harmonious to the most ordinary mind of to-day. I do not say that the deep significance of the law which is thus revealed to us is appreciated by every one who even reflects upon it; but I do assert that no mind can receive so grand an idea, even partially, without being in some degree enlarged by it, even if they do not see in it, what it seems to me to contain, a type and prophecy of the obedience which man shall yield to his Creator when harmony with the will of the Creator shall become the triumphant motive of his whole being, and law shall reign as certainly over every movement of his spirit, as over the orbits of the planets.

L

Philal. Not the idea, but the symbol in which it is embodied.

Philoc. But it is exactly that habit of mind, that readiness to find the spiritual in the material, that seems to me wanting in scientific men. They look at, not through, the window.

Philal. The window is their work. What lies beyond is without the boundaries of science. The tendency of early science is to forget those boundaries; the science of our day, in guarding perhaps too anxiously against this error, refuses to take cognizance of what lies beyond them. I anticipate for the maturity of thought a combination of what is right in both these tendencies, as I hope in my own age, to return to what was most precious in the feelings of the child, without losing anything of what was gained by the experience of the man. Meantime, do not forget that our debt is not small to those scientific men who possess least of this spirit-who would regard any inclination to look

sion and symbol of the spiritual, as mere idle dreaming. You owe them this, that, while they spend laborious years in the painful elaboration of some new view of nature, they are translating for you a symbol, in which you may be most certain no conception of their own has mingled. If the result of their operations contain an element so carefully eliminated from the crucible in which the fusion was made, we may be perfectly certain that that element was a constituent part of the original materials.

Philoc. But tell me how you would reconcile with other and more important views of truth any theory which makes man the product of the lower tendencies of the animal world? Suppose it granted that the author of such a hypothesis is not bound to follow me to that ground, still, as I know you must be ready to take that point of view, do you not refuse to accompany me there.

Philal. On a future occasion I shall be very happy to do so.

shoots which the privet hedge is making in the square garden, and hail the returning tender-pointed leaves of the plane trees as friends; we go out of our way to walk through Covent Garden market to see the ever-brightening show of flowers from the happy country.

This state of things goes on sometimes for a few days only, sometimes for weeks, till we make sure that we are safe for this spring at any rate. Don't we wish we may get it! Sooner or later, but sure— sure as Christmas bills, or the incometax, or anything, if there be anything, surer than these-comes the morning when we are suddenly conscious as soon as we rise that there is something the matter. We do not feel comfortable in our clothes; nothing tastes quite as it

should at breakfeast; though the day looks bright enough, there is a fierce dusty taint about it as we look out through windows, which no instinct now prompts us to throw open, as it has done every day for the last month.

All

But it is only when we open our doors and issue into the street, that the hateful reality comes right home to us. moisture, and softness, and pleasantness has gone clean out of the air since last night; we seem to inhale yards of horsehair instead of satin; our skins dry up; our eyes, and hair, and whiskers, and clothes are soon filled with loathsome dust, and our nostrils with the reek of the great city. We glance at the weathercock on the nearest steeple and see that it points N.E. And so long as the change lasts we carry about with us a feeling of anger and impatience as though we personally were being illtreated. We could have borne with it well enough in November; it would have been natural, and all in the day's work, in March; but now, when Rottenrow is beginning to be crowded, when long lines of pleasure-vans are leaving town on Monday mornings for Hampton Court or the poor remains of dear Epping Forest, when the exhibitions are open or about to open, when the religious public is up, or on its way up, for May meetings, when the Thames is already sending up faint warnings of what we may expect as soon as his dirty old life's blood shall have been thoroughly warmed up, and the Ship, and Trafalgar, and Star and Garter are in full swing at the antagonist poles of the cockney system, we do feel that this blight which has come over us and everything is an insult, and that while it lasts, as there is nobody who can be made particularly responsible for it, we are justified in going about in general disgust, and ready to quarrel with anybody we may meet on the smallest pretext.

This sort of east-windy state is perhaps the best physical analogy for that mental one in which our hero now found himself. The real crisis was over; he had managed to pass through the eye of the storm, and drift for the present at

least into the skirts of it, where he lay rolling under bare poles, comparatively safe, but without any power as yet to get the ship well in hand, and make her obey her helm. The storm might break over him again at any minute, and would find him almost as helpless

as ever.

For he could not follow Drysdale's advice at once, and break off his visits to "The Choughs" altogether. He went back again after a day or two, but only for short visits; he never stayed behind now after the other men left the bar, and avoided interviews with Patty alone as diligently as he had sought them before. She was puzzled at his change of manner, and, not being able to account for it, was piqued, and ready to revenge herself and pay him out in the hundred little ways which the least practised of her sex know how to employ for the discipline of any of the inferior or trousered half of the creation. If she had been really in love with him, it would have been a different matter; but she was not. In the last six weeks she had certainly often had visions of the pleasures of being a lady and keeping servants, and riding in a carriage like the squires' and rectors' wives and daughters about her home. She had a liking, even a sentiment for him, which might very well have grown into something dangerous before long; but as yet it was not more than skin deep. Of late, indeed, she had been much more frightened than attracted by the conduct of her admirer, and really felt it a relief, notwithstanding her pique, when he retired into the elder brother sort of state. But she would have been more than woman if she had not resented the change; and so, very soon the pangs of jealousy were added to his other troubles. Other men were beginning to frequent "The Choughs" regularly. Drysdale, besides dividing with Tom the prestige of being an original discoverer, was by far the largest customer. St. Cloud came, and brought Chanter with him, to whom Patty was actually civil, not because she liked him at all, but because she saw that it made Tom furious. Though he could not fix