system. These facts are believed by Christians, they say, merely through prejudice and education. A serious examination, they assert, reveals the weakness of Christian belief and destroys its foundation.

The same reasoning is strictly applicable to the innate sense of virtue. We defy them to show the reason for it, if God's existence is not first admitted. This innate sense of virtue belongs to the supersensual, if not to the supernatural order; and for positivists both are identical, since positivism does not admit anything above It must, therefore, in their eyes, be only the offspring of education, of the common-sense of mankind, entirely misled and unreasonable in this case. It is, therefore, a pure prejudice; and they are the slaves of prejudice when they consent to be ruled by it. The French philosophers of last century were more consistent and more logical. They rejected with scorn the law of morality, as well as the dogmas of revelation; both were for them de simples préjugés. Most of them openly showed their contempt for both by living in adultery with the wives of others, often with those of their friends and fellow-philosophers.

We confess, however, that we prefer the inconsistency of modern positivists to the strict logic of the old French materialists. Still it is absurd on their part; and we contend that it cannot last, nor spread among the mass of their followers. At this moment they are trying their best to popularize their doctrine, and to inoculate with it the lowest ranks of society. In France, even, it is chiefly among these last that these pernicious notions prevail; and, thank God! the intellectual classes are with a few exceptions decidedly opposed to the new theories. And in that unfortunate country it is the immoral consequences of the new doctrine, and not its principles, that form the chief incentive that brings the uneducated into its ranks. And every one knows how far the people in many large French cities are demoralized through unbelief. In England it would be still worse if the social dregs, of London for instance, had simply an inkling of what the" leaders of thought" in Great Britain are about. It is the good fortune of the nation (we may say) that the lower classes are too degraded even to imbibe this poison. Let them be prepared for it by popular lessons, such as are given in French secret societies of the lowest kind, and the catastrophe predicted by Mr. Mallock, as the "second fall of man," might soon astonish mankind, even in England.

Meanwhile the effect produced by these doctrines on the men who are able to understand the lofty speculations of Mr. Herbert Spencer in his Data of Ethics, of Mr. Huxley, and many others in their Lectures, is sufficient to prove their deleterious nature. This is admirably described by the author of Is Life Worth Living? in

his eighth chapter, entitled "The Practical Prospect." The "moral dejection" therein analyzed is shown to be shared even by the leaders of the party. At the end of the chapter he quotes "one English writer on the positive side who has clearly seen what the movement really means, whose continuance and whose consummation he declares to us to be a necessity." Here are the words of the English writer quoted by Mr. Mallock:

"Never in the history of man has so terrific a calamity befallen the race as that which all who look may now behold, advancing as a deluge, black with destruction, resistless in might, uprooting our most cherished hopes, ingulfing our most precious creed, and burying our highest life in mindless desolation.”

A fine prospect, indeed, whilst it is pretended that in positivism. virtue as virtue is as admirable as ever! The boast of Mr. Tyndall, referred to above, does not seem to be universal among positivists. It is well known that J. S. Mill, one of the greatest among them, lived most sadly, and almost died of despair.

It would seem useless after this to discuss the pretension that the morality of the Catholic Church is inferior to that of these new professors of ethics. But the quotation just given from Mr. Mallock gives rise to some serious considerations, with which we will conclude.

The heartfelt feeling expressed by that “English writer"—when he said that a frightful calamity was "advancing like a deluge, . . . uprooting our most cherished hopes, ingulfing our most precious creed, and burying our highest life in mindless desolation"-referred simply to Protestantism. The writer was appalled by the mere juxtaposition of what would be the destiny of man on earth under the new dispensation prepared by positivism, and of its destructive effects upon those whose happy lot it was to possess the Anglican belief. He thought only of Protestant hopes, of the Protestant creed, and of Protestant life.

We have endeavored to show how inferior is Protestant morality compared with that of the Catholic Church, and consequently how superior to those of Protestantism are our hopes, creed, and life. Of these an imperfect description has been given in this paper. From it the true character of Catholic sanctity may be discerned, though it has not been brought fully to view. A volume would be required to do that, and the writer may say incidentally that the book is written, and may soon be published. But, from the few details here given, it may be concluded that the loss, if positivism should prevail, would be far greater for the Catholic than for the Anglican. Our holy religion, both in its supernatural character and in its exterior organization, is highly promotive of the most exalted sanctity. It has been proved that the character of holiness belongs to

it alone, and that saints, in the proper meaning of the term, cannot be found among Protestants. This is the necessary result of the elimination of Christian dogmas of which Protestantism is guilty; and in doing this it has reduced to a minimum quantity the supernatural element, of which its writers scarcely dare to speak. But the Catholic organization promotes the spread of holiness in a most wonderful manner. Its hierarchy, its monastic orders, its sacramental system, all unite in taking hold of man from his cradle to his grave; and nothing on earth is so powerful as they to mould the human being to the pattern of true sanctity. The history of the Church proves this beyond all doubt; and the more the truth becomes known through an enlightened criticism, the wider and deeper the influence of the Catholic Church is seen to have been in benefiting mankind, particularly as regards morality. Of all this we would be deprived should the doctrine of the new theorists become rooted in the public mind.

This becomes particularly perceptible when attention is paid to two circumstances which must necessarily be closely examined when there is question of virtue. These are the struggle and the reward.

First, therefore, the practice of virtue necessitates a struggle. The positivists recognize this, and often speak of it in terms of high consideration. It is evident that some of them, at least, have found in their experience how hard it is even occasionally to continue virtuous. They assert, however, that they can succeed; and it is astonishing how in England all join in acknowledging the moral uprightness of this school. But it is remarkable that the virtue they claim consists in self-sacrifice to others, an exterior thing, and not in the interior struggle for self-improvement, which is the primary foundation of virtue. This idea is graphically described by Mr. Mallock in his Atheistic Methodism in the following words:

"Bill and James are two tourists, whose keenest personal pleasure is in cutting their own names on the roofs of public buildings. They take a long and toilsome walk, that they may perform this feat on the highest pinnacle of a certain cathedral tower, Having climbed at last, however, to the lofty scene of action, they find, to their horror, that they have only two minutes to spare, that the leads of the coveted pinnacle are some distance out of reach, and that if either is to cut his name at all it can only be one of them raised on the other's shoulders. There is, for a moment, a struggle in the minds of both. Then Bill's will triumphs, and lifting James up, who cuts his name in rapture, Bill's only pleasure, the only reward of his walk, is such of James's pleasure as, received by himself vicariously, is in excess of the pain consequent on his own self-denial."

We have here the whole theory of struggle and reward in the positivist's ethics. The struggle is carried on through self-sacrifice for another in which the will triumphs; and the reward is a pleasurable share in the other's gratification over the pain consequent

on his own self-denial. According to their view, therefore, the only kind of virtue which is of any value, namely, that which refers to others, ends in selfishness; still it is such kind of selfishness that the majority of mankind, if imbued with the positivist's notions, would never consent to, but would much prefer to it the merely animal gratification advocated by the former French "philosophers." Any one acquainted with human nature must acknowledge that the righteousness preached by the positivist cannot kindle in the will the enthusiasm required for carrying on successfully the struggle, such as it is. It is absurd to base virtue on such a struggle as this.

But, besides this vicarious virtue, as it is called, namely, that which looks to and is derived from others, there is the real fundamental virtue which regards only man's improvement, and constitutes sanctity in man, because it purifies the soul and prepares it for acts of exterior benevolence, carried on as far as self-sacrifice. Mr. Mallock expresses it very felicitously when he says in Atheistic Methodism:

"Virtue includes not only the subjugation of our own pleasures as warring against others' happiness, but the subjugation of our own lower pleasures as warring against our own holiness. And logically, in our conception of virtue, it is this last-named part of it which is the first. My desire for holiness must first make my life precious to me before I can attach much preciousness to the lives of other people. Thus the meaning of the word virtue is at once immeasurably widened, and its present popular use is explained naturally. I will but quote one instance, and that shall be the commonest and the most significant,-the popular identification of virtue with sexual continence. What is implied here is not that chastity is a virtue because externally it is of social use to others, but because internally it prepares self for God, because it is a part of that same debt to Him, of which subserving the welfare of others is another part, and a part logically subordinate."

It is to be remarked that the positivists do not condescend to speak of this branch of virtue.

How after this can the ethical system of positivism be compared with the Catholic. Both in the struggle and in the reward the Church offers to her children all the means of acquiring virtue of every kind, and all the incentives to its practice. They are taught that the first and greatest object of their lives is to purify themselves interiorly, to sanctify themselves and become holy in the all-searching eyes of God. They are prepared for the exterior struggle by this interior one; and they can rise to the highest degree of self-sacrifice when they have first subdued their passions, and established peace inwardly by rendering their senses obedient to reason. The reward comes directly after. In this life they know that they please God and do His will, which is a sufficient guerdon for the man of faith; and they see besides the immense and eternal reward which is prepared for them in the possession of God forever.

A long history of nearly nineteen hundred years has sufficiently established the claims of the Church over those of all other systems as regards morality. A few years more will put an end to the boasts of positivism, as has indeed been predicted both by impartial observers and even by some positivists themselves. Could we have taken up and shown the system of positivism as a whole, its delusive character and pernicious effects would be still more obvious, but we were compelled to restrict our discussion to an exhibition of its natural effects only on the morals of mankind, and even this has been compressed into too narrow limits to be as satisfactory as the writer could have wished.

PHYSIOLOGY AND MODERN MATERIALISM.

The Physiology of Mind. By Henry Maudsley, M.D. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

ITHIN a few years a so-called science, having appropriated

the pretentious title of physiological psychology, has flaunted itself before men's eyes and courted the consideration of the scientific world on the ground that having rejected the figments and unrealities of the past, it has entered on the true pathway leading up to the knowledge of all mental phenomena, by studying what it delights to call the objective side, only, of mind. That this should be the result of the rapid growth of physiology in the course of the last half century is nothing more than what the history of philosophy prepared us to expect. The tendency of the mind, owing to its limited vision and inherent imperfection, is to overdo whatever it eagerly sets about doing, and men having brought to light magnificent truths under the stimulus which urged them to the prosecution of physical research, imagine they have discovered the highway which leads to the goal of all truth. The close interdependence of psychical and physical conditions rendered it impossible to study the latter without taking note of the former; and though the converse impossibility is not so obvious, it nevertheless exists, and those systems of psychology which are based on the substantial character of the thinking principle are sadly marred and one-sided in consequence of having disregarded it. The psychology which flourished in the seventeenth century would be puzzled to reconcile its leading positions with the facts