men wise by exhibiting to prudence the advantage which the race would derive from wisdom, and by showing the pulchro-moral faculty the beauty of wisdom. But there exists no prudential faculty that is concerned about the advantage of the race, and in the bulk of men occasions of self-denial put the pulchro-moral faculty in abeyance. It is strong as censor of the conduct of others and as an ally of self-love, but barren of selfdenying motive. Prudence is concerned about the advantage of its subject, not about that of the race. What should the prudence of Tom, Dick, or Harry reply to a challenge to incur life-long pain for the sake of a possible resulting happiness to the race, to ensue in two or three thousand years if the race last so long? For aught that experience and inference make known, there may be an impassable gulf between man and wisdom; for aught they make known, resources in the womb of nature of which she has never yet given a hint might impart to the next or any future generation native conditions of a perfect wisdom needing for its development no more experience than that of childhood; but, limiting our view to probability discernible by legitimate induction, human nature affords no means for the acquisition of wisdom, if those of which Christ availed be inefficient.

3. The idea of goodness for God's sake is inconsistent. Bad men who are godly may behave for God's sake as though they were good, but the behaviour evinces godliness, not goodness. One who conducts himself perfectly for God's sake resembles a beautiful statue in clay. But it is probable that the good behaviour for God's sake possesses a transmuting virtue capable of converting the atoms of the clay into atoms

of Parian marble. If Christ's enterprise succeed, such a transmutation will be accomplished in man ;-the tissue of godliness, by a kind of Talicotian transfer, will be converted into the tissue of Wisdom.

4. If the reader have experienced the Christian spirit it should be obvious to him that, apart from the worship and the mysticism, Wisdom and the Christian Spirit are identical. Wisdom is the Christian Spirit self-apprehended as a plain, homely, sober part of Nature, a type disappointing to hearts accustomed to the exaltations and intensities of supernaturalism. Can it survive godliness? Science is washing away from its roots the soil of godliness: can it survive? Experience warrants hope and faith that it can. But is there any soil in which the seed of Wisdom could have germinated save that in which Christ planted it the soil of godliness? Sanctity-the quality in virtue of which sacredness is a paramount power-is essential to Wisdom. Could the other conditions of sanctity have found their complement in a sacredness that does not depend on actual moral worth-the sacredness of mere humanity, if Reverence had not first climbed toward Heaven upon a symbol of the sacredness of a Creator and Providence? Surely not. People of interior life know that companionable sympathy with those who grovel in the common spontaneity is incompatible with growth in Wisdom. "I never go amongst men," says the author of the Imitation, "but I return less a man." Unactuated by the devotion of godliness, who could incur the dreariness of the needful detachment? If conduct conformable to a dominant love of the neighbour, including painful abstinence from the satisfaction of what Nature gives as being righteous indignation,

had not been exacted of godliness, how could vindictiveness have been rooted out of the heart? Now that experience has made known to a considerable part of mankind the aptitude of the Christian Spirit for the conduct of life, so as to interest prudence and common sense in the pursuit of holiness, and that knowledge of the organic necessity which mainly determines the behaviour of the unwise exhibits a natural reason of charity, a raft is provided on which the Christian Spirit may save itself when the ark of godliness founders; but human nature gives no ground for the supposition that, without godliness, the Christian Spirit could have embodied itself in human experience.

CHAPTER V.

MAN PUPPET, DUPE, AND VICTIM OF UNCONSCIOUS

FORCE.

CLXXIX.

SINCE Consciousness is an effect of unconscious molecular change, and a sine qua non of the mental event known as Volition, is not volition an effect of unconscious molecular change? No. The change supplies an indispensable condition of, but does not cause, volition. It makes the mind conscious and possesses it with a practical alternative, but it does not cause the preference which the alternative occasions. The preference is an uncaused act of the conscious mind. Is this susceptible of proof? It can no more be proved than a deliverance of experience can be proved, or an axiom, or any datum whatever, e.g. the existence of the NotSelf: it can no more be proved than the data presupposed by proof. The existence of Matter-the existence of the molecules supposed by molecular change, which Materialism will have to be the cause of volition,-is not susceptible of proof. Yet one of the most eminent scientific authorities of the day is for reducing us all to automata, denying a dynamic bearing of consciousness on human behaviour,-because the bearing is not sus

ceptible of proof, and because a part of human behaviour is automatic.1

1 I refer to the article in the Fortnightly Review of November 1874, entitled, The Hypothesis that Animals are Automata. "It seems to me," writes the author of this article, "that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motions of the matter of the organism." . . . "If these propositions are well based it follows that we are conscious automata." One of the propositions is that a part of human behaviour is automatic, the other, that "there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motions of the matter of the organism." By this kind of argument it may be proved that all things are chimeras,—that there is no reality-as follows;-Certain things, e.g. the objects of dreams, are chimeras, and there is no proof that any thing is real; therefore all things are chimeras. In so far as the argument derives its conclusion from the second proposition it employs a kind of fallacy that was notorious when Logic was in vogue, namely, Affirmative conclusion from negative premiss. If it be allowed that sophism may be inadvertent, it is sophistical, as implying that nothing is credible, or at least above suspicion, but what is susceptible of proof; for instance, that the truth of the thesis, Things equal to the same are equal to one another, which is not susceptible of proof, is not above suspicion. Stilling his logical conscience with such a counterfeit of argument, Professor Huxley hurls his authority against the foundation of human dignity and morality. His exasperation against the "drum ecclesiastic" has to apologise for more than one error in this article. He tells us that molecular change is the cause of all consciousness, and then implies that molecular change is change of consciousness; consequently that every consciousness is the effect of a change of consciousness! "I am incapable," he says, "of conceiving the existence of matter if there is no mind in which that existence is pictured," which is as much as to say that matter is a mental image; not a remote object symbolised by a mental image, but the image or immediate object itself. Now, immediate objects are modifications of consciousness, and, if matter be a species of immediate object, it is a modification of consciousness, its molecules are modifications of consciousness, and molecular change is change of consciousness. Therefore, according to Professor Huxley, every consciousness is caused by a change of consciousness! According to this self-contradictory doctrine consciousness is the basis of all entity save time and space, and, nevertheless, has no more to do with human behaviour than the steam-whistle with the motion of the locomotive! The article has a subtler fallacy in the doctrine that Freedom is privation of extrinsic hindrance,—that the