But, instead of strengthening the case, he shifts its ground in such a way as completely to surrender it. It was not at all necessary to his argument from "delicacy" that he should deny the bearing of moral considerations upon the question; but this he has done in a way that, so far as it has any influence at all, will strengthen the hands of the inveterate enemies of copyright. He intensifies the discords upon a subject which many seem bent upon befogging and distracting by all the arts of ingenious sophistry. He professes to be friendly to copyright, and then reasons his way to the destruction of all copyright by denying that there is any right or wrong in the matter. This reasoning is as follows: "Now, for me the matter is simplified by my believing that men, if they go into their own minds and deal quite freely with their own consciousness, will find that they have not any natural rights at all. And as it so happens with a difficult matter of dispute, so it happens here: the difficulty, the embarrassment, the need for drawing subtile distinctions and for devising subtile means of escape from them when the right of property is under discussion, arise from one's having first built up the idea of natural right as a wall to run one's head against. An author has no natural right to a property in his production. But then neither has he a natural right to anything whatever which he may produce or acquire. What is true is, that a man has a strong instinct making him seek to possess what he has produced or acquired, to have it at his disposal; that he finds pleasure in so having it, and finds profit. The instinct is natural and salutary, although it may be over-stimulated and indulged to excess. One of the first objects of men in combining themselves in society has been to afford to the individual, in his pursuit of this instinct, the sanction and assistance of the laws so far as may be consistent with the general advantage of the community. The author, like other people, seeks the pleasure and the profit of having at his own disposal what he produces. Literary production, wherever it is sound, is its own exceeding great reward; but that does not destroy or diminish the author's desire and claim to be allowed to have at his disposal, like other people, that which he produces, and to be free to turn it to account.". Mr. Arnold here discredits as groundless and illusory that whole order of ethical conceptions which we have been wont to regard as fundamental in relation to human conduct. Whether he scouts all morality does not appear, but he denies it at least in one class of human actions. Though dealing with transactions between man and man which involve the ideas of "possession," appropriation of property," "robbery," "criminality," "penalty," etc., he never refers to such things as "justice," "equity," "duty," "right,” and "wrong," or any principles of obligation. Though all men recognize these conceptions, though the government of society is founded upon them, and though men are fined, imprisoned, and strangled, accordingly as their actions fail to conform to these fundamental ideas, yet Mr. Arnold airily waives them all aside as irrelevant and impertinent in relation to the subject he is discussing. The reader will notice the wordy circuits by which he avoids all the moral elements of the inquiry. To get rid of any question of rights in this matter, he plucks up by the roots and casts to the winds all natural rights. To him who claims a right to life he virtually says: "Oh! no; you have an instinct to live, which is natural and salutary. You find pleasure in life, but it is its own exceeding great reward, and society graciously allows you to have it at your disposal; but you have no natural right in the matter." He maintains that a man has no right of property in his productions, except "so far as the law may choose to create one for him." But is there no | Physical science is not to be put down right or wrong in the nature of things by which the law itself is to be shaped, and to which it is the object of all law to give effect? A man creates a work of value into which he has put his time, exertion, substance, and his very blood. Has he a right to the property he has produced against those who covet it? It shall be as the politicians vote, argues Mr. Arnold: "If the ayes have it, he has; if the noes have it, he has not." This is not creditable. Mr. Arnold should cultivate a more intimate communion with the 66 power that makes for righteousness." Much is made in this article of the difficulty of securing property in books. Government is, of course, a very imperfect agency, and only partially secures any of its objects. But all other difficulties are as mole-hills to mountains compared with that which Mr. Arnold lends his influence to increase and strengthen. SCIENCE NOT ATHEISTIC. We recommend those thoughtless theologians who think they are doing God service by arraying modern physical science against him and charging that it is atheistic, to read the article entitled "God and Nature," by the Lord Bishop of Carlisle. He utters a timely and much-needed rebuke to his careless brethren on this subject. We have been amazed at the fatuity of many divines in the course they have pursued upon this question. Their predecessors have been more wise, and have generally recognized that "the study of nature led up to nature's God"; but now, on the contrary, we are assured that the study of nature leads to the denial of God. What on earth our theological friends are to gain by spreading the belief that physical science is fundamentally irreligious by renouncing and subverting all conception of the Deity, we are at loss to understand. in this way. It is a great phase of man's mental progress and is destined to increase in influence in an accelerating ratio. There is no doubt, furthermore, that its growth is an invasion of the domain illegitimately held by theology in the past, and threatens the ascendancy of theological systems and ideas. It is hardly to be expected that professed theologians can view this change with complacency, but that affords no excuse for getting into a passion with science, and striving to array religious prejudices against it. Our friends should not forget that the "modern science" upon which they expend their denunciations is a great body of accredited and impregnable truth, and that it is a somewhat serious matter to declare and reiterate the accusation that it is atheistic in its spirit and influence. How far is this from asserting that the demonstrative truth of nature is against the existence of God!-and if scientific men reply to the theologian, "Very well, you know best," where will rest the responsibility? The Bishop of Carlisle sees that this is a mistaken policy. He says, "It is not desirable that the reproach of atheism should be thrown about rashly "; and, what is more important, he points out that as commonly done it is not true. A very slight examination of the conditions of thought in scientific pursuit forbids the current theological conclusions. He draws a valid distinction between the legitimate, proper, and logical attitude of the scientific mind toward the conception of Deity and the atheistic state of mind; and he strives to mark this distinction by the introduction of a new term. He says: "It seems to me that we want a new word to express the fact that all physical science, properly so called, is compelled by its very nature to take no account of the being of God; as soon as it does this it trenches upon theology and ceases to be physical science. If I might coin a word, I should say that science was atheous, and therefore could not be atheistic; that is to say, its investigations and reasonings are by agreement conversant simply with observed facts and conclusions drawn from them, and in this sense it is atheous, or without recognition of God. And because it is so, it does not in any way trench upon theism or theology, and can not be atheistic, or in the condition of denying the being of God. Take the case of physical astronomy. To the mathematician the mechanics of the heavens are in no way different from the mechanics of a clock. It is true that the clock must have had a maker; but the mathematician who investigates any problem connected with its mechanism has nothing to do with him as such. The spring, the wheels, the escapement, and the rest of the works are all in their proper places somehow, and it matters nothing to the mathematician how they came there. As a mathematician the investigator of clockmotion takes no account of the existence of clock-makers; but he does not deny their existence; he has no hostile feeling toward them; he may be on the very best terms with many of them; it may be that, at the request of one of them who has invented some new movement, he has undertaken the investigations. Precisely in the same way the man who investigates the mechanics of the heavens finds a complicated system of motion, a number of bodies mutually attracting each other and moving according to certain assumed laws. In working out the results of his assumed laws, the mathematician has no reason to consider how the bodies came to be as they are; that they are as they are is not only enough for him, but it would be utterly beyond his province to inquire how they came so to be. Therefore, so far as his investigations are concerned, there is no God; or, to use the word above suggested, his investigations are atheous. But they are not atheistic." For the further working out of this conception in his article, the Bishop must be held responsible. We only call attention to the position here assumed, as illustrating the progress of a liberal and rational theology. THE LONDON "TIMES" ON “CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS." THE attitude of the British press for the last twenty years toward the writings of Herbert Spencer is a curious study. It was natural enough that Spencer could not get a publisher who would take the pecuniary chances in an interminable system of philosophy opposed to all other systems, and based upon an unaccepted and repugnant doctrine; and so nothing remained for him but to publish himself. The works, at any rate, were thus put squarely upon their merits. The powerful agency of publishers in influencing the press was dispensed with; and, as Spencer was the last man to lift a finger for the procurement of critical favor, his publications were left to themselves, editors being neither directly nor indirectly bribed, placated, or flattered. The consequence was that, with but few exceptions, the books were assailed with such reckless misrepresentations that Spencer was compelled to stop sending copies to the press. Nor did he resume the practice until increasing public interest in his labors coerced critics into more decency and fairness. Some influential journals, however adopted the policy of silence, ignoring Spencer's books altogether. The "Spectator" has adopted this plan. Not a single one of this author's works has ever been reviewed in that journal; and that they were not thought to be worth reviewing could not be alleged, because the chief editor of the "Spectator," Mr. Hutton, went out of his way to attack Spencer's ethical views in an essay read before the Metaphysical So ciety, and which he subsequently printed in "Macmillan's Magazine." It is, of to deal with the subject. LITERARY NOTICES. ENGLAND: HER PEOPLE, POLITY, AND Pur SUITS. By T. H. S. ESCOTT. New York: IN these pages Mr. Escott has endeavored to make a survey of modern England, presenting all the salient features of English social, political, literary, and industrial life in such a way as to give a correct picture. Of course, so large a subject can only be given in outline in this compass, but by a judicious use of materials a very large The London "Times" also, the organ and oracle of British opinion, has illustrated its idea of fair-play by never criticising or noticing any of Spencer's volumes. These volumes were being widely read; they were molding the opinions of thinkers; they were becoming influential in the universities; they were elaborately criticised in the reviews; they were replied to in numerous pamphlets and books; they were translated into all the Continental languages; they were guiding scientific investigation, and familiarizing the cultivated mind of the age with a new order of ideas, but they were never recognized by the London "Times" any more than if they were non-existent. George Henry Lewes said of Spencer that he alone of all British thinkers had organized a philosophy; but the "Times" had no information about it. The meanness of its course is the more palpable, as it never had and the subjects treated in approximately any principles of its own to maintain, characteristics of the English village; the their relative proportions. The life and and said what it pleased on any sub-position and duties of the great landhold. ject; while Spencer was engaged upon ers; rural administration and municipal a most formidable undertaking, with government; the law-courts, the legislature, immense odds against him. But the the crown, as well as the official system, "Times" has given in at last. Now all receive more or less attention. Hotel that the world's verdict has been deci- and traveling facilities and popular amusesively rendered, it pluckily determines ments receive such notice as their imthat this author's work must have at- portance warrants. Considerable space is tention. given to the condition and prospects of the working-classes, the relations they hold to the other classes of English society and to the state, and the conditions and some of the causes of poverty among them, and the means employed to alleviate it. Educational systems and measures, the structure of society, the relations of society to politics, commercial and financial features, And so it breaks the long silence by an elaborate review of "Ceremonial Institutions." There is nothing noteworthy about the article except the significance of its appearance in the "Times's" columns, and the ludicrous perplexity of the writer's position. He writes as if he thought his readers were asking, after twenty years' reticence, Why are you moved to speak now? The book he reviews is part of a series of works which can not be critically understood without reference to the previous volumes. But there is no reference to them-no intimation as to how Spencer was led mass of information has been introduced are treated more or less fully, while a large place is given to the intellectual life, religious, scientific and literary. One of the most noticeable chapters in the book is that devoted to British philosophic thought. It is contributed by Mr. W. L. Courtney, of Oxford, and is an able and appreciative review of the subject. He recognizes fully the importance of the work that has been done by Mr. Herbert Spencer, and gives him the foremost place as a systematic thinker, not only among his contemporaries, but among all English thinkers of the century. Of the other two workers in psychology who have claims to a position somewhere near the level of Mr. Spencer, George Henry Lewes and Alexander Bain, Mr. Courtney gives to Mr. Lewes the higher place. The book is a very readable one, and, from the extent and variety of its information, will prove attractive to a large class of persons. THE INTEROCEANIC CANAL AND THE MONROE FREE SHIPS. By Captain JOHN CODMAN. Monographs," of which the first two pam- The essay on "Free Ships" is an able discussion of the reasons for the decline of the American carrying-trade, in which the folly and stupidity of our legislation on the subject are clearly shown. Captain Codman points out that this legislation has been continually in the interests of a handful of ship-builders, while the vastly larger interests of the ship-owners have been systematically ignored. At the time when the carrying-trade of the world was done in wooden ships, Americans were able to build the best and cheapest ships; and England, recognizing the interests of the ship-owners as right In the pages of this little volume will be found compiled a considerable amount of information concerning the commercial importance of the interoceanic canal, the history of the various schemes for constructing it, and its relation to the interests of the United States. It is a timely summary of the leading general facts regarding the enterprise, but does not go fully into the discussion of the merits of any particularly predominant over those of her ship-buildproject. The book was evidently prepared for an emergency-the arrival of De Lesseps in this country-with the design of heading him off in his project. Unless there was an unavowed and sinister purpose in its publication, we can not see why it should have been issued anonymously. If its author was interested in a rival scheme, and a man of mark, he would very naturally withhold his name from the titlepage; but, in treating a great public interest like this in an open and candid way, there can be no occasion for the concealment of authorship. That the book is aimed at De Lesseps is shown by the prominent use the writer makes of the Monroe doctrine, as a means of defeating a foreign project. We showed last month the humbug of this Monroe-doctrine pretext, and there are plenty of indications that the public is beginning to understand how utterly it is perverted when applied to the cutting of a ship-waterway across the American Isthmus. The book is narrow in spirit, and advocates a bigoted and illiberal national policy, which, if carried out, would become a scandal to American history. ers, allowed her merchants to freely purchase ships wherever they pleased. Under this policy, her carrying-trade thrived, and has continued to thrive. And when American merchants were placed under the same conditions-as they were when our ships were the best that could be had—our carrying-trade also thrived. When iron supplanted wood in ship-construction, and we could, in consequence, no longer build as cheaply as England, our legislators had not the wisdom to follow the policy that had proved so successful in England. Instead of allowing our merchants to purchase vessels where they could get them cheapest, they began fostering the ship-building interest-not by putting a heavy duty on foreign ships, but by prohibiting the purchase of such ships at all. Those engaged in other protected industries have been content with the imposition of onerous duties on competing foreign products, but, if one prefers these, he is at liberty to buy them and pay the duty. This sort of protection is not enough, however, for the ship-builders; nothing short of absolute prohibition has been able to satisfy them. The inter |