The Need and the Dangers of Culture.

219

sternness and rigidity than of sweetness and grace. And how much need there is for the latter anyone may feel who, hushing if he can the tumult of passion in his own breast, listens to the uproar of societies, parties, and institutions, ignoring or combating each other, struggling for existence or supremacy, and pursuing their several ends with unlimited self-assertion.

But culture has its dangers. It needs the safeguards of common-sense and Christian principle. Its love of light and realism, its Hellenic tendency, of which our own Shakespeare is a fine though unconscious example, may develop into the beautiful, sensuous, classic naturalism of Goethe, or the daring and fanatical paganism of Swinburne. On the other hand, its sweetness and grace may degenerate into the indifference and licence which express themselves in much of our high-class current literature, and in the habits of too many of our educated and cultured youth.

And now we must say farewell to Mr. Arnold for the present. We have read his essay with pleasure and profit, notwithstanding we have felt obliged to differ from him in several important particulars. His clear, flexible style, his delicate humour, his imperturbable good temper, make his book very pleasant reading, while there is much in the matter advanced that must engage the the serious interest of thoughtful minds. Beneath the play of badinage there is an earnest meaning, sometimes a profound pathos. If he trifles at times on the edge of great questions, almost like a heartless sceptic, it is because he sees more keenly and truly than many how great and deep these questions are, and because he despairs almost bitterly in his secret heart of any solution of them, at least in our time. He has merited thanks by his caustic exposure of the superficiality and ignorance of much that has long passed in England for unquestioned truth and wisdom. Boldly has he, with his sling and stone, assailed the Goliath of our newspaper press, and he has left his dint and mark upon the brow of the great Philistine. He has helped to abate our ignorant national self-confidence on the subject of education. He has taken down a little of our tall talk on several pressing questions. He is, indeed, too much of an exquisite in all things, and more self-conscious than is really beautiful or graceful, whatever he may imagine, or than is consistent indeed with the truest and noblest culture. Apollo among the gods is too much his model; among the saints he has too little sympathy with the soul of Paul. In a word, he verges

upon effeminacy, and has as little as possible of the heroic in his composition. He neither glories in the Cross, nor is prepared to address himself to any labour of Hercules. Still we have always considered that those were wide of the mark who regard Mr. Arnold as a mere dreamer, a superfine amateur reformer. We wish, however, that this opinion had not so much colouring of excuse. There is a sort of gay-hearted innocence about him, or rather perhaps a wonderful assumption of it. There is an apparent want of earnest recognition of the ills and needs of society. We are sure, however, that he is not without deep and manly feeling on these subjects; only he believes that what is wanted now is not so much an instant application of some remedy or other, as more thought about the whole matter. Yet it would be better for the effect of Mr. Arnold's exhortations if he threw into them a little more feeling, and if he showed some appreciation of his countrymen's sincerity and labours. There is a trifle too much mere fault-finding. Mr. Arnold has Hellenised himself too completely. And pleasant as it all is while he discourses, we are apt to get cloyed with the sweetness and wearied with the light, and to long for a little Gothic ruggedness, strength, and gloom. Above all, it would be well if, upon the true and firm convictions of a Christian believer, were built up in his character the strength and hope of the Christian life.

LITERARY NOTICES.

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief. By S.
Baring-Gould, M.A. Author of "Curious Myths of the
Middle Ages," "The Silver Store," &c.
Heathenism and Mosaism. Rivingtons: 1869.

Part I.

MR. BARING-GOULD is the most remarkable man of the latest generation of extreme Anglo-Catholics. It would hardly be guessed from the work we have now before us how various are his credentials, or how advanced is the position which he occupies in that vanguard of Sacramentarian Ritualists, which has done not a little already towards revolutionising the Church of England. More than three years ago he contributed to the first annual volume of the series of Essays known under the general title of "The Church and the World," a frank and striking paper "On the Revival of Religious Confraternities ". -a paper which indicated great breadth of view, remarkable knowledge of human nature, and especially of rustic English human nature, and a politic and practical sagacity such as is not so often found even among "Mission Priests." Last year, for the third volume of the same annual serial, he wrote a paper on the "Origin of the Schools of Thought in the English Church." This paper showed much learning, and a definite system of philosophy, and of ecclesiastico-historical criticism. In it he maintained that "the essentials of Catholicism are— 1. Unity of Faith. 2. Apostolic Succession. 3. Sacramental System;" that "the conviction that the English Church is Catholic, makes it a matter of conscience with the Catholic party to remain in her communion;" that " Protestantism," in the modern stress and conflict of thought, must, before long, suffer" necessary extinction," and only Scepticism and Catholicism be left to divide the world of thought between them. Whilst he has thus been taking part as a mission-priest and as a leading writer in the labours of his special church school, he has at the same time been lending his attention to researches which do not often attract "mission-priests." Within the last three years, or thereabouts, he has published two volumes on the "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," which have earned high commendation from our highest critical authorities of various schools, and which are just now republished in a new edition in one volume. He has also published a book on Iceland, its Scenes and Sagas; another entitled, The Silver Store: Legends, Parables, and Anecdotes collected from Mediaval,

Christian and Jewish Writers, and one on Past Mediaval Preachers, which contains "some account of the most celebrated preachers of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries," and he has now in the press an Essay on the History of Church and State in France, while he has just published the volume whose title stands at the head of this notice. It is a volume of multifarious learning, of great acuteness, tersely and vividly written, and most comprehensive in its sweep. Mr. Baring-Gould adopts the merely physiological conclusions of the physiologico-psychological school of which Mr. Lewes may be taken as the best known representative, but rejects their conclusions as to the law of causation. The combination of the sensi-idealist philosophy and phraseology of Bain or Lewes with the doctrines of spiritualistic realism in philosophy is very curious-the effect indeed is not seldom almost grotesque. The volume, however, is one which merits and will secure marked attention. The following extracts contain passages with which our readers will not sympathise. On the whole, however, they intimate the outlines of a philosophy which aims, not weakly or unworthily, at conciliating the results of inductive demonstration in that which is material with the philosophy of consciousness.

"The seventh hypothesis is that the universe is the creation of infinite wisdom operating in love; that there are two attributes in God conditioning one another-liberty and necessity. Creation, reflecting this nature, is at once free and necessary. Pantheism gives us an absolute God, anthropomorphism gives us a personal God, materialism supplies link of cohesion. Fuse the ideas, absorb materialism in pantheism, and pantheism in theism, and the result is what I may call phusitheism. Reasoning from final causes, the existence of a Creator is obtained; for the presence of mind working in nature is demonstrated. It is a clear and satisfactory proof to the ordinary understanding of man; but it proves nothing more than a finite God. If this idea be supplemented by another obtained by ontological argument, the result is an infinite God, impersonal and yet personal, immanent in nature and yet not of or by nature, omnipotent and omniscient, influencing and moulding the material world, which is in Him, and He in it.

"God can be seen in His creatures, for He communicates Himself to man through nature; He is in the works of creation by His essence, which is that by which they have their being; He is in them by His power, as principal cause giving motion. Thus it is God who enlightens through the medium of the sun, warms by the fire, and nourishes through bread. God is present in every force of nature-in heat, electricity, magnetism, attraction, gravitation. It is not that heat, electricity, &c., are God, but that light, heat, electricity, &c., are the effects of the presence of God, effects of His action on the bodies He has given us. Thus, all creatures are to us sacraments, or outward and visible signs of the invisible being of God, veiled under them. What do I see in nature?' wrote Fénelon: God God everywhere— God alone.""

"Now if we look at man's faculties, we see that their sweep extends far beyond the term of the development of his sensual life. The intelligence of the Andaman islander may possibly not over-step this limit. He knows, and desires to know, perhaps, nothing but what will prevent the sun from blistering his skin. He is a naked monkey, plus the faculty of covering his nakedness. But with the vast majority of the races of men it is otherwise. Their faculties extend beyond these narrow bounds. Through eye and ear enter gleams that illumine a phase of life other than that which is animal, and fill it with longings and impulses to which the material existence is a stranger. The human mind is open to a chain of pleasurable impressions in no way conducive to the preservation of man's sensual being, and to the perpetuation of his race. He derives pleasure from harmonies of colour and grace of form, and from melodious succession of notes. His animal life needs neither. He is conscious of instincts which the gratification of passion does not satisfy, for they are beside and beyond the animal instincts. He feels that his orbit is an ellipse around two foci, that there are two centres of attraction to him, an animal consciousness, and that which we will call a spiritual consciousness. Unless we suppose a second centre, a series of instincts, sensations, and volitions remain unaccounted for. Man derives his liveliest gratification and acutest pain from objects to which his animal consciousness is indifferent. The rainbow charms him. Why? Because the sight conduces to the welfare of his spiritual being. An infant manifests these instincts in a pronounced manner. It dreads and hates darkness: light fills it with ecstasy. It distinguishes between persons. The solicitations of some are received with smiles, those of others meet with an opposite response. It crows with delight at the sight of a rose; it laughs with pleasure on hearing a tune. A pictured angel pleases it, a painted devil appals it. All these instincts are utterly waste, unless we suppose that there is another consciousness in man beside that of the animal.

"Man's structure is axidal, as has already been said. Towards the lower pole are the seats of the animal apparatus, towards the higher pole is the spiritual apparatus. To the lower pole belong the reproductive and the digestive organs-the latter the apparatus for acquiring force, the former that for disengaging the force requisite for propagation. At the higher end of the axis is the brain, the seat of the intellect. The vital power can, at will, be precipitated on any point. Sentiment stands as it were on the fulcrum, and inclines either to the side of the animal or to that of the spiritual nature according to circumstances.

"When, as among savages, the vital energy is expended on the sensual life, the brain is inactive. When, as among men of intellect, the vital force is directed upon the brain, the sensual life is enfeebled. This is capable of direct proof. Intense mental application, involving great waste of the nervous tissues, and a corresponding consumption of nervous matter for their repair, is found to be accompanied by a cessation in the production of sperm cells. The reverse is also true; an