SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS

ON

MR. LILLY'S WORKS.

ON RIGHT AND WRONG.

By W. S. LILLY.

Second Edition. Demy 8vo, 12s.

From the SATURDAY REVIEW.

"With characteristic vigour and clearness he (Mr. Lilly) sets forth the faith that is in him. His outlines of Rational Ethics' define free will as man's distinctive endowment; morality as the deliberate self-submission to duty, and duty itself as the ethically necessary. He refers moral obligation, not to experience, but to reason, and succinctly describes the rule of ethics as the natural and permament revelation of reason."

From the SPECTATOR.

"In this book, Mr. Lilly pursues to a further end the idea which has been the leading idea and the principal object of his other books. A Century of Revolution was a study of the spirit of the Revolution, the materialism which is its meaning and its consequence. It was therefore chiefly occupied with the special development in France of this materialism and its effect on all forms of life, art, and politics there. This book takes a wider view and deals not only with the spirit of the age in one country, but in human life as a whole. It goes forward into the great conflict between the two powers of the world, the two broadly defined schools of thought, Transcendentalism and Materialism. It would be narrowing the question to say, Belief and Disbelief; and Mr. Lilly guards himself so carefully from narrowness of this kind. that his reviewers ought to do the same. We think it is hardly saying too much to call this book a noble book. Books on moral philosophy are not, generally speaking, very popular. We might say they are not the fashion. Most fairly culti vated people read, or make a pretence of reading, the works of Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Clifford, and the rest. Young people feed on Mill almost from the nursery. The limits of these writers are clear; their doctrines, explaining everything from physical law, seem logical and not to be questioned; their systems, one as much as another, are ready-male religions, and from their limits, their appeals to nothing beyond human experience, are easily popularised. The champion of the Transendentalism has a wilder field of fight; he appeals from the visible to the invisible, and asks men to believe that the real is only the shadow of the ideal. Rising beyond experience,' he takes men into a region of thought where the wings of modern souls are sometimes hardly strong enough to follow him; and if he argues philosophically, as a student of metaphysics to any purpose must do, he uses technical expressions belonging to his own science, but hard to be understood by the ordinary reader, whose ignorance in the domain of the moral philosophy is boundless. It is to this ordinary reader, that Mr. Lilly's new book ought to be invaluable; for in a clear and charming style it makes him understand what is at stake in these materialist days-nothing less than the moral life and death of men and of nations."

From the NATIONAL OBSERVER.

"Mr. Lilly disposes his arguments, some of which have done service already in the Century of R.volution, with all the cogency and brilliancy which distinguished that admirable piece of work."

From the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

"Next in interest to this first chapter, in which Mr. Lilly strips off with unsparing hand the disguises assumed by some of the Materialists, notably by those in whom the heredity of a nobler philosophy is most potent, are the chapters in which he sets out the effects which their philosophy has had, and is likely to have, on practical life. His a priori argument is full of close and powerful reasoning; but his account of the demoralization which the hostile tenets are working on politics, on journalism, on doctrines of property, on morality in general and the relation of the sexes in particular, and on art, will, at least with the majority of readers, be more effective."

"One of the powerful and capable of the publicists who wage warfare against the current materialistic philosophy is W. S. Lilly. His latest volume On Right and Wrong' shows no falling off in controversial and dialectic skill, and is a forcible statement of the moral necessity of Transcendentalism."

From the GUARDIAN.

"We commend this volume cordially to our readers. It certainly does not breath the ordinary atmosphere of modern philosophy; but from this very cause it is all the better worth reading. Its chief merit seems to lie in the use made of the principles of the Roman jurists and the schoolmen, authorities who are undeservedly neglected at the present time."

From the ATHENÆUM.

"Mr. Lilly is just, eloquent, and forcible in the exposition of his own transcendental view."

From the LIVERPOOL POST.

"Mr. Lilly's volume is a most important contribution to controversial ethics, and it puts the reader in a position to understand the points at issue in this department of human thought. It is a book to make one think, and to keep one alert with brilliant and paradoxical reflections. Best of all the style is admirable."

From JOHN BULL.

"It is certainly a most important and valuable contribution to the study of modern ethics, and we feel very grateful to Mr. Lilly for having bravely descended into the battle-field to combat the materialists with their own weapons. That there really is a difference between Right and Wrong, that they are not merely conventional terms, that the difference between them is not merely a question of practical comvenience or of utility, not merely a question of so many more or so many less brain molecules, is a truth which unfortunately needs enforcing at the present day. It is well that one so thorougly equipped for the fray as Mr. Lilly has shown himself to be should be ready to do battle for the truth, and should by meeting the materialists on their own ground make up for some of our national shortcomings in the domain of moral philosophy."

From the MANCHESTER EXAMINER.

"Mr. W. S. Lilly has produced the most practically valuable contribution to ethical science which has appeared in this country for many years. The author is very successful in showing that if morality is to retain any meaning, as something more than a mere department of physiology or anthropology, it must include both the sense of obligation implied in the phrase I ought' and the consciousness of ability to fulful the obligation implied in the companion phrase * I can." Perhaps, however, Mr. Lilly's greatest dialectical triumph is to be found in the pages where he deals with that subtlest advocate of the new ethics-Mr. Herbert Spencer."

From the GLASGOW HERALD.

"Mr. Lilly's book is a good one. Its statements are clear, its criticisms acute, and its style invariably excellent. He has overcome the difficulty of making a philosopical work thoroughly popular and interesting."

From the SCOTSMAN.

"Mr. Lilly speaks plainly enough and vigorously too. able."

His criticism is fair and it is

From the MELBOURNE ARGUS.

"Mr. Lilly, through an argument distinguished by uncommon clearness of language and force of reasoning, makes a somewhat dry theme readable even by casual readers."

From the QUARTERLY REVIEW.

"A powerful statement of principles. The cardinal truth that experience is the touchstone of ethics, we are happy to observe, has been kept in view throughout this learned and suggestive volume. Nor has any recent writer asserted the fundamental deetrine of ethics with more convincing arguments or greater dignity of language than Mr. Lilly, in his fourth chapter. wherein he follows the footsteps of Kant, while employing a style which appeals with singular force to the ordinary cultivated intellect."

A CENTURY OF REVOLUTION.

By W. S. LILLY.

Second Edition, revised and enlarged.

Demy 8vo, 128.

From the TIMES.

"Mr. Lilly's book is eminently suggestive, and demands most serious attention. It is too philosophical and profound to be light and easy reading, but his clear convictions and definite conclusions are expressed in terse and forcible language. He is always logical; he is fair and candid towards the advocates of the creed he condemns, for when he refutes them they are judged out of their own mouths, and by quotations so precise and self-contained that they are obviously independent of

context."

From the ATHENEUM.

"We repeat our general conclusion that Mr. Lilly's attack on the revolutionary dogmas is an eloquent and a cogent sequence of facts and arguments which those who dissent from it are bound to weigh and to answer. He has shown, we think, that the doctrine of evolution, which is the widest generalisation to which we have yet attained, is absolutely destructive of the ideas of 1789. And he has indicated in many telling passages-the full proof would be beyond the limits of such an essay as he presents to us-that these ideas are not only false in their origin, but mischievous in their application; responsible rather for the discouraging than for the hopeful elements in the societies around us, and in no way capable of sustaining the enthusiasm which their first promulgation evoked. This vigorous and timely work."

From the TABLET.

"A series of masterly essays treating of the Revolution in its relation to social and moral, rather than political phenomena. Its author, as cur readers scarcely require to be told, belongs to that more thoughtful school of historians who are not content to review the events of the past without considering them in their general bearing on humanity at large, and is, therefore, well qualified to write on a period so familiar in its superficial aspects, yet so inexhaustible as a theme for speculation and ethical inquiry, as the sanguinary drama which ushered in the revolutionary epoch in Europe. His lucid and nervous diction enables him to be profound without obscurity, and to make clear the metaphysical basis on which abstract political reasoning must ultimately rest. Starting then from that revolutionary dogma of the all-sufficiency of man to himself and bis fellows, promulgated for the first time in any society of human beings or in any stage of progress in France during the last century, he proceeds to judge of the moral efficacy of this doctrine by its fruits, and to consider the revolution in its relations with each, of what he terms, the four great factors of civilisation as it exists in the world-liberty, religion, science, and art. From these, its more ethical and æsthetical aspects, he passes to 'examine its connection with the great political fact of this age, commonly called democracy,' and indicates, in conclusion, its influence on public life in England. In his chapter on the Revolution and Liberty, which is a masterpiece of sound and forcible reasoning, he brushes away the specious cobwebs of sophistry, on which is reared the revolutionary dogma that liberty resides in political equality. These are among the questions raised by Mr. Lilly's thoughtful volume, which, while thus suggestive to the student of history, is not less entertaining to the general public from the happy form in which the author has the art of presenting his ideas to his reader."

From the MORNING POST.

"In considering the effect which the Revolution has had upon liberty, Mr. Lilly arrives at the conclusion that its work has been almost entirely negative, that it has destroyed restrictions upon the exercise of human power, but that in achieving liberty in the positive sense it has failed. He considers particularly the case of France, which he asserts to have been converted by the Revolution into a chaos of hostile individuals, and where, he adds, public spirit has been destroyed. He asks whether freedom can be attributed to the French peasant, of whom he finds little, if any, good to say; affirming him to be brutalised and utterly selfish, a mere human automaton, a voting animal, incapable of realising his powers for the common good.' The artisan class, in France, does not appear to meet with much more approbation, as Mr. Lilly considers it to be saturated with the anarchic teaching of Rousseau,' and puts it down as a prey to political agitators, who dazzle it with visions of socialistic utopias.' The conclusion at which the writer arrives is sweeping. He asserts that the Revolution in France has shown itself hostile to liberty of person, liberty of property, and liberty of education.' In connection with religion, Mr. Lilly points out that hostility to religion is one of the chief characteristics of the Revolution,' adducing in support of that contention the Declaration of Rights, and, explaining Gambetta's famous apostrophe, Le clericalisme voilà l'ennemi,' by other speeches of the same statesman, he roundly affirms that by clericalism is meant all religions and all religiosity. As to the relations of the Revolution with science, Mr. Lilly seeks to prove that the facts of Darwinism, that generalisation of science to which the Revolution is, he asserts, fond of appealing --that the facts, as opposed to the speculations, of Larwinism are fatal to the fundamental pro

positions of the revolutionary dogma. The chapter on Revolution and Art consists almost entirely of an examination of Zola's method, as the author maintains that naturalism in art is a note of the Revolution; but perhaps the most interesting portion of the work is that dealing with the influence of the Revolution on democracy."

From the SPECTATOR.

"Of the many books called into being by the centenary of the French Revolution, Mr. Lilly has written one of the most striking. His book is a study of the spirit of the Revolution-a difficult task, for which he has been well prepared by his philosophical studies in European history..... This striking, thoughtful, and interesting book."

From JOHN BULL.

"The centenary of '89 has naturally called into existence a great mass of interesting literary matter dealing with the French Revolution. But we doubt if it has brought forth anything more interesting from a literary as well as from a political point of view than Mr. W. S. Lilly's A Century of Revolution.' The accomplished author of that very striking and remarkable book, entitled Chapters in European History,' has the courage of his opinions, and feeling strongly, does not shrink from expressing strongly what he feels. We commend most heartily to all our readers this most striking stu ly of the results, political and social, of A Century of Revolution,'”

From the SCOTSMAN.

"There is singular opportuneness in the appearance of Mr. W. S. Lilly's noteworthy book powerful broa Isi le of philosophic argument, discharge point-blank at the champion of the * Gospel of 1789,' at the moment the preparations are going forward for celebrating the pulling down of the Bastile.... he assails the Revolution in the germ and in the fruit-he hews at root and branch... he examines the Revolution in the light of a century's experience, its relation to the four great factors of civilisation --liberty, religion, science, and art-and its influence on democracy and on the public life of Englan l.”

From the QUARTERLY REVIEW.

"By far the most thoughtful contribution to the study of politics which the centenary of 1789 called forth."

CHAPTERS IN EUROPEAN

HISTORY,

With an INTRODUCTORY DIALOGUE on the PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.

By W. S. LILLY.

2 vols., demy 8vo, 218.

From the TIMES.

"These volumes of Mr. Lilly's are delightful reading, whether he compels our assent to his conclusions or provokes us to doubt and differ from them. For they are full of pregnant and suggestive thoughts; we might almost add of subtly ingenious sophistries. He is always original and very often brilliant. There are pages of fervidly impassioned eloquence, and passages in which striking scenes are reproduced with wonderfully realistic dramatic power. He has the art of impressing on the reader his own definite conceptions of the grander figures in the misty past, of their characters, their conduct, and the influences that governes it. Besides that, he brings to a complex and difficult task a wonderful amount of varied research and reading. He quotes with confident knowledge from recondite authorities. Yet, with all his eru lition, he is no pelant. He is as much at home with light modern writers as with the ancients. Nor does he disdain to turn to the pages of fiction for the most faithful pictures of mediaval life in an Italian Republic. So he carries us along from

chapter to chapter, under the spell of his style and the interest of his information; and yet all the time we are kept half unconsciously on the defensive, since he flies in the face of popular ideas, as he delights in propounding paradoxical opinions. We can only repeat that his volumes are charming while they should be invaluable as an incentive to intellectual research."

From the ATHENEUM.

"This review of European History has the merit of extreme simplicity. Mr Lilly is always interesting, and his book should be read by every one who has any desire to know what are the present tendencies of thought among the most cultivated class of English Catholics. He sets forth in a bright, animated, and graceful style the results of much reading and reflection, and even those who differ from him most widely will be pleased by the perfect frankness and lucidity with which he states his conclusions."

From the SPECTATOR.

"Mr. Lilly's style has both lucidity and charm. . . . . It is a common experience to meet with a volume which might with advantage have been compressed into an essay. Here we find something much more uncommon--a volume of essays, almost every one of which would gain in interest and value by being expanded into a volume. . . . . The work of a sincere, searching, and honest thinker who never allows his thought to become reckless and wanton, who never, even in the heat of a moving argument, condescends to those polemical points' which are the bane of edifying discussion, but who leads us with him not by impetuosity, but by the urbane moderation and restraint which proceed from the conviction of which the whole work is an outcome, that truth may be left, not to take care of itself,' as contemporary phraseology would put it, but to be cared for by One who will never leave it nor forsake it. There is not one of these chapters which may not be studied separately with enjoyment and intellectual satisfaction, and yet they naturally link themselves to one another, and have the unity of a common aim. They are rich in learning and in interest; and the work as a whole is one that can be heartily recommended."

From the TABLET.

"These volumes are a worthy sequel to Mr. Lilly's Ancient Religion and Modern Thought,' which we reviewed last year. More varied in matter and not dealing so much in pure speculation, they are full of interesting and timely discussion on the problems, religious, social, and political, which cast their shade over modern life. It is needless to praise the learning of so confessedly an erudite man as Mr. Lilly; the pages bear witness to long-continued and far-reaching studies of which the results are given in a graceful, polished, persuasive style. The manner is very bright and has the charm of complete sincerity. . . Mr. Lilly speaks what he believes, confident that truth alone will advantage the cause he has at heart."

From JOHN BULL.

"Mr. Lilly's Chapters in European History' form one of the most fascinating and attractive books that we have met with for a long time. The author has made good use of his wide and extensive reading, and has a most pleasant way of bringing in, without obtruding, the fruits of his research. His style is most readable, and would, even if his matter were less valuable in itself, lend a considerable charm to volumes which, as it is, have no small value when we regard their matter rather than their manner. The earnestness with which he enforces his views would claim attention for them even if those views were as ill-founded as some hostile critics have asserted. Though it is impossible to deny that the author's taste for paradoxical utterances has now and again led to his developing some startling theories, those theories are, even when most paradoxical, well worthy of attention. Indeed, there is a subtle and incommunicable charm about the very vein of paradox which runs through the book, and we may well forgive the paradoxes for the sake of the charm of freshness and originality which the rare literary skill of the writer has thrown over them."

From the ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE.

"Mr. Lilly has earned a deserved reputation for learning, originality, and brilliancy of style. His latest work will confirm this reputation. It is obviously the result of very wide reading; it is marked by copious and polyglot quotations, and by a wondrous wealth of paradox and epigram; and his style is always striking."

From VANITY FAIR.

་

"Here is an author who knows almost everything that has been written under the sun; he is a vast magazine of facts and ideas.... Such an article as that on The Eighteenth Century' is so admirable that we can only wish we had an exhaustive volume from the same hand."

From the GRAPHIC.

"Everywhere Mr. Lilly's work is characterised by profound thought and much learning, while the theme is made as attractive as its weighty nature will allow by a luminous and admirable style."