scope analyse a grief. The organism of nature, like that of the brain, lies open, in its external features, to the scrutiny of science; but, on the inner side, the life of both is reserved for other modes of apprehension, of which the base is self-consciousness and the crown is religion."-Modern Materialism, pp. 66-69.

The most distinctive and peculiar feature, perhaps, in the atheism of Mr Bradlaugh, is the extent to which it is rested on the notion of substance enunciated by Spinoza in the definition-"Substance is that which exists in itself, and is conceived per se; in other words, the conception of which does not require the conception of anything else antecedent to it." It is strange that Mr Bradlaugh should not have seen that this notion, this definition, implies that we can have a priori and absolute knowledge, and is utterly incompatible with the doctrine that all our knowledge is relative and based on the senses. If he can conceive substance per se, and not merely through its qualities, effects, and relationships to his own faculties, he is logically bound to abandon sensationalism and all its consequences, and betake himself to absolute idealism or to mysticism. Indeed, following in the footsteps of Spinoza, he actually treads for a short distance the high a priori road, without apparently being aware that he is on it, and gets as far as the conclusion that there is only one substance. It is to be regretted that he should not have more carefully inquired whether there is even one. I have never seen it proved that there is even one substance in Spinoza's sense of the term. Defining substance in the way indicated, the creation or origination of substance is, of course, absolutely inconceivable to Mr Bradlaugh. If we mean by substance only what is self-existent, the creation of substance is a

manifestly self-contradictory expression, equivalent to the origination of the unoriginated.

"Substance" is not the only metaphysical spectre which haunts the mind and disturbs the reasonings of Mr Bradlaugh. "Infinity" is nearly as bad. In fact, for a person possessed of a typically English intellect, Mr Bradlaugh shows, in dealing with theism, a curious predilection for metaphysical conundrums. As a good example of this, I may adduce the reasoning by which he endeavours, in a criticism of my volume on 'Theism (see National Reformer,' Dec. 23, 1877), to show that the universe cannot have been originated by God. "This new universe," he says, "was either better than God, or it was worse than God, or it was identical with God. But it could not have been better than the infinitely perfect. Nor can the infinitely good be conceived as capable of resulting in that which was a deterioration. Nor can the theory of absolute sameness be maintained, as this would render it impossible to distinguish between the creator and the created." From this argument, it would appear that Mr Bradlaugh's idea of an infinitely perfect Being is that of a Being unable to produce any finite effect. According to his view, infinite perfection is equivalent to utter weakness. This rivals Hegel's 'Being and Not-Being are the Same.' Mr Bradlaugh thus proceeds: "This new universe must have been something added to that which existed prior to its origination, or it was nothing added. But the instant you conceive something added to God, you fatally impugn His infinity, or you succeed in affirming infinity and the new universe added to it-which is nonsense." Let Mr Bradlaugh try another application of this reasoning, and he will hardly fail to see that it is a mere metaphysical

cobweb. He himself exists, and, being of a certain size, fills a certain amount of space. Yet, before he existed, space was infinite, and whether he existed or not space would be infinite. Does his existence, then, fatally impugn the infinity of space? And unless it be nonsense to affirm infinity and Mr Bradlaugh added to it, why should it be nonsense to affirm infinity and the universe added to it? Mr Bradlaugh continues: "You affirm that the universe owes its existence to the reason and will of God—that is, that the universe did not always exist, but that God reasoned about it and decided that it should exist. Now, as the universe did not always exist, prior to its origination its non-existence must have been reasonable or unreasonable to God. But it cannot be supposed that the infinitely wise and powerful would have endured the unreasonable; therefore, while the universe did not yet exist, its non-existence must have been reasonable. But if it ever were unreasonable that the universe should exist, and if God was then the sole infinite existence, and infinitely wise, it would have always been unreasonable that the universe should originate, and there would never have been any creation." It is hardly necessary to point out that Mr Bradlaugh here confounds reason with reasoning. No intelligent man thinks or speaks of God as reasoning. But stranger even than this oversight is the conception of infinite wisdom implied in Mr Bradlaugh's argument. Infinite wisdom is assumed to be incompatible with the origination of anything finite at a definite time. If so, infinite wisdom must be much inferior to human wisdom in its humblest form.

There is an impression in some quarters that atheism is advocated in a weak and unskilful manner by the chiefs

share.

of secularism. It is an impression in which I do not Most of the writers who are striving to diffuse atheism in literary circles are not to be compared in intellectual strength with either Mr Holyoake or Mr Bradlaugh. The working men of England may be assured that they have heard from the secularists nearly everything in behalf of atheism which is at all plausible.

NOTE XXV., page 253.

DARWINISM AND THE UNIVERSALITY OF RELIGION.

Darwinians are obviously not logically bound to deny that religion is a universal characteristic of the human race. They may even quite consistently maintain that traces of it will be found not only among all tribes of men, but among various species of animals. And this is what several of them actually hold.

Mr Darwin himself merely ventures to suggest that the dog is susceptible of "a distant approach" to religious emotion. He says: "The feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex one, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of dependence, fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps other elements. No being could experience so complex an emotion until advanced in his intellectual and moral faculties to at least a moderately high level. Nevertheless we see some distant approach to this state of mind in the deep love of a dog for his master, associated with complete submission, some fear, and

perhaps other feelings." Not a few evolutionists go much farther, and, indeed, represent as evidences of religion all the tokens of confidence and gratitude towards man displayed by the lower animals. M. Houzeau ('Études sur les Facultés Mentales des Animaux,' pp. 271-273) thinks that there are many persons and even peoples not so religious as the dog.

As to this view, it may suffice to say that trust and gratitude are not in themselves religious emotions. They only become so when their objects are, or are supposed to be, supernatural beings. A man's confidence in and affection to a fellow-man are not religious emotions. Why, then, should a beast's confidence in or affection towards a man be so designated? A man is not to a dog an invisible being, an agent inaccessible to its senses. It may be replied that the object of man's worship may be a visible being, and that, in fact, numerous peoples adore stones, plants, and animals. If the religion of a man may display itself in the worship of a beast, why should not a beast show itself to be religious in the worship of a man? The answer is that a man never worships a beast merely as a beast; while we have no reason to suppose that a beast in trusting or loving a man regards him as anything else than a man. When a man worships a beast, he worships it not as what it really is, but as the type or symbol, the mask or embodiment, of a Divine Being. It is some unseen agent-some mysterious power-manifested in, or at least somehow associated with, the beast, that he really adores. Low, therefore, as his worship is, there is a spiritual sense-a consciousness of the Invisible and Divine at the root of it. Can it be shown that there is anything of the kind in a dog when it fawns upon a