But is there not an important significance in the very fact which makes our intellectuals desperate with indignation, the fact that you cannot change the "public mind" so rapidly as you can change its tramway services, its governments, or the place the cellar, the crust of the earth, or the skyin which it is to be housed? It is easier to take a man up in an aeroplane than it is to make him agree that his neighbor ought to run away with his wife, or that his sons ought not to read Thucydides. Even amongst those writers whom I have named there is beginning to arise a half-formed consciousness that amid all these changes in circumstances we must be careful how we admit changes in character and in mental calibre; a consciousness that we are in need of some fixed point by which the world may be enabled to retain its sanity. Now there are two classes of people who believe in permanence; those who think that the world is the same always because they are too silly to open their eyes; and the very small class of those who have felt profoundly that all things are changing in something more than the Heraclitean sense, who have yet penetrated to the necessity of a permanence, of an organic human continuity, underlying the multiplex circumstances and ideas of our life. And this brings me back to Mr. Forster and Mr. Galsworthy. "Howard's End," the old-fashioned house which gives its name to Mr. Forster's novel, is contrasted with the new buildings which are occupied and vacated, which spring up on all sides and are vicariously inhabited, which draw nearer and nearer to the garden and the wychelm of "Howard's End." It is the symbol of permanence, of the old order which "connects" the past with the present, the personal and individThe English Review. ual with the cosmopolitan and indifferent; it is the something sacred which neither an individual nor a nation can afford to neglect. Mr. Forster, impressed as he is with the need of change, directed instead of haphazard, nevertheless perceives that there are permanent elements, belonging to character, in our blood and our tradition, which cannot be ignored without peril. Mr. Galsworthy, in The Patrician, is no longer the mere antagonist of the established order of things. He seems to have attained a sort of optimism strangely at variance with his earlier views; to have perceived that running through all these conflicts, revolutions, and evolutions, there is and has been a certain national sense, a sort of collective reasonableness, which is constantly making itself felt, and being expressed in its best form by the leaders of opinion, the aristocrats of nature; that the torrent runs, as it were, between solid banks; that in the long run character triumphs over confusion. There is in this view, doubtless, the danger of complacence. But it is worth noting that the time is already passing when the transformations wrought by science and its attendant agents can shake the soul within our bodies. Science was applied to industry, and it changed the appearance of England; it was applied to organic life, and it destroyed ancient history. It was applied to religion, but before it had quite demolished it, became its ally. It has been applied to morals, aud has threatened them, but must needs be called into their support. Character, becoming once again its own master, promises to hold science in leading-strings, to control the prodigious, artificial, invented, but increasingly manageable collective organism, and to make of England what it likes. R. A. Scott-James. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. BY THE LATE LEO TOLSTOY. Amongst the learned who study philosophy one meets some individuals who study it-not, as most of them do, merely professionally-but for the sake of their own souls. It is difficult for these learned men to free themselves from the scientific superstitions in which they have grown up and matured, and by the service of which conspicuous worldly success is so often obtained. But some of them, possessing live. sincere, and moral natures, unceasingly strive to liberate themselves. Realizing in their inner experience all the narrowness-or, to put it plainly, the stupidity-of the materialist view of life, which is incompatible with any moral teaching, they are inevitably drawn to the acknowledgment of a spiritual principle as the basis of everything, and to the question of man's relation to that spiritual principle; that is to say, they are drawn to questions of ethics, to which more and more attention has been paid of late. What it comes to at bottom is, that by a long and intricate road of scientific philosophy they are brought to the simple position accepted by every Russian peasant-even by those who are illiterate-that one must live for one's soul, and that, in order so to live, one must know what to do and what not to do for that purpose. The relation of these learned men to the matter is, I consider, perfectly correct; but unfortunately they for the most part cannot manage to free themselves from the scientific ballast they have assimilated as something necessary and valuable and that has to be utilized, but which really, by obstructing reason, prevents its free play. Sharing with all scientific men the superstition that philosophy is a science LIVING AGE. VOL. LI. 2675 which establishes the foundations of all other truths, they, in order to establish these truths, unceasingly construct one theory after another, without ever reaching any definite result. Great erudition and even greater flexibility and ingenuity of mind often encourage them in this; but the chief reason that their labor fails to yield results, is the false (as I hold) conviction accepted among them, that religion is nothing else than faith: faith, in the sense of credulity-the acceptance of statements certain people have made; and that, consequently, faith or religion can have no significance for philosophy; and that philosophy, if not antagonistic to religion, must at least be entirely independent of it. They, with all the scientific philosophers, overlook the fact that religion (faith), besides the meaning now attributed to it-that is to say, besides dogmas and the establishment of blind belief in certain Scriptures has another meaning. This real meaning is the acknowledgment and clear expression of the indefinable elements (the soul and God) felt by everybody. And so it is that all the questions with which scientific philosophers are so zealously occupied, and to solve which an endless number of mutually contradictory and often stupid theories are constructed, were solved centuries ago by religion, and solved in such a way that there is, and can be, no need and no possibility of re-solving them. These men, like all their fellow-philosophers, do not perceive that religion -not the perversion to which religion has everywhere been and still is subjected-but religion in the sense of the acknowledgment and expression of indefinable but ever-realized elements (the soul and God), is the inevitable condition of any reasonable, clear, and fruitful teaching of life of teaching from which alone firm principles of morality can be deduced-and that therefore religion, in its true sense, cannot be opposed to philosophy; and more than that, that philosophy cannot be a science unless it accepts the data established by religion for its basis. Strange as it may seem to those who are used to consider religion as something inexact, "unscientific," fantastic, and inconstant, and science as something firm, exact, and incontrovertible -in philosophic matters the very reverse is the case. The religious conception of life says: "Before all things, and most indubitably, there exists something indefinable, and that is our soul and God." But just because we know this before everything else, and more indubitably than anything else, we can in no way define it; yet we believe it exists, and is the basis of everything, and on that belief we build all our further teaching. From all that is knowable to man, religious perception selects the thing which does not admit of definition, and says of it, "I don't know." And that attitude toward what it is not given to man to know is the first and most essential condition of true knowledge. The teachings of Zoroaster, the Brahmins, Buddha, Lao-Tsze, Confucius, and Christ are of that kind. The philosophic view of life, on the other hand, seeing no difference, or shutting its eyes to the difference between knowledge of external phenomena and knowledge of the soul and of God, regards a chemical combination and man's consciousness of his own ego, astronomical observations or calculations and the acknowledgment of the Origin of all life, as alike open to rational and verbal definition; and-confusing the definable and the undefinable, the knowable and the unknowable -unceasingly constructs fantastic and mutually contradictory theories one on the top of another, in attempting to define the undefinable. Such are the teachings of life of the Aristotles, Platos, Leibnitzes, Lockes, Hegels, Spencers, and of many others -their name is legion. In reality, all these teachings consist: (1) of idle reasonings about what is not subject to reason, reasonings which might be called philosophistics, but not philosophies: the love of philosophizing, but not the love of wisdom; and (2) of poor repetitions of what, in relation to this moral law, has been much better expressed in the religious teachings. Yes, strange as it may seem to those who have never thought about it, the understanding of life of any pagan who in his religion acknowledges an inexplicable origin of all things, personified by him in any kind of idol—unreasonable as his conception of that inexplicable origin may be-has yet an understanding of life incomparably higher than that of a philosopher who does not acknowledge the undefinable basis of all knowledge. The religious pagan acknowledges something undefinable, and believes that it exists and is the origin of all things; and on this undefinable something he builds, well or ill, his understanding of life, and he submits to that undefinable Origin and is guided by it in all his actions; while the philosopher-endeavoring to define that which defines everything else, and can therefore not be defined-has no firm foundation on which to build his conception of life or to use as a guide for his actions. It could not be otherwise, for all knowledge consists in establishing relations between causes and effects. And the chain of causes is endless, and evidently the study of certain series of causes in that endless chain cannot form the basis of a world-conception. A few days ago a learned professor explained to me that all the faculties of the soul have now been traced back to mechanical causes; "only consciousness is not yet quite explained," said he with striking naïveté. "We already understand the whole machine, only we don't quite know by what and how it is set in motion." This is amazing! Only consciousness (the "only" is delightful) is not yet explained by a mechanical process! "Not yet explained," but the professor is evidently convinced that any day the news may arrive that some Professor Schmidt of Berlin, or Oxenberg of Frankfort, has discovered the mechanical cause of consciousness, that is, of God within the soul of man. Is it not plain that an old woman believing in the Kazán Queen of Heaven is not only morally but mentally incomparably superior to that learned professor? 1 What's to be done? Where are we to get the foundation of our worldconception, since reasoning-the activity of the mind-supplies no such foundation? Has man, then, no other knowledge than that obtained by reasoning? The reply is obvious: each man within himself is conscious of a knowledge quite distinct from reasoned knowledge, and independent of The Hibbert Journal. the endless chain of cause and effect. This knowledge is his consciousness of his spiritual ego. When man discovers this consciousness directly for himself, he calls it "consciousness"; but when he finds this consciousness, which is common to all mankind, in religious teachings, in distinction from reasoned knowledge, he calls it "faith." Such were all the faiths, from the most ancient to the newest. The essence of them all lies in the fact that, despite the often absurd forms they have taken in their perversions, they yet give to him who accepts them, such bases of knowledge, independent of the chain of cause and effect, as alone render a reasonable conception of life possible. So that the learned philosopher confined within the endless chain of cause and effect, who does not acknowledge a religious basis, is inevitably forced to seek for an imaginary and impossible cause of all causes; while the religious man recognizes this cause of all causes, and has faith in it; and consequently, in contrast to the scientific philosopher, possesses a firm understanding of life and a sound guidance for his actions. THE LITTLE COMPTON SENSATION. whiskers to his brilliantly polished and squeaky boots. As he pursued his contemplation, the outer-doors were pushed open, admitting a stream of yellow sunshine, and with it a little, bald-headed man with a red nose and a green baize apron. He approached the counter, eyed Mr. Gandy deliberately, and ordered a pint of ale. Mr. Gandy drew the beer as if it were a sacred office, wheezing the while. He was a man with a ponderous manner, and a full bar or an empty bar 'made no diference to the sacred flow of the liquor. He had an eye that could cower a "drunk" more effectually than the muscle of a barman. "Dry work movin'," said the man with the red nose pleasantly. Mr. Gandy wheezed. "I'm a stranger 'ere," continued the man, as he produced some bread and cheese from a piece of pink newspaper. "Funny little 'ole, I calls it. Nothin' to do, far as I can see. No street accidents 'ere, I'll take my oath," and he laughed genially at his own joke. "You're one of the pantechnicon-men from Holmleigh?" queried Mr. Gandy with dignity. "Right, first time!" laughed the irrepressible, with his mouth full of bread and cheese. "I'm up at the Fort, I am. Oh! It's b—, I tell you. Sorry! it slipped out." This had reference to the word he had used, which had caused Mr. Gandy to "look" at him. "The Fort?" queried Mr. Gandy. "The Fort?" "Yus! the Fort," grinned the man. "That's what I calls it. Never saw so many guns in all me puff, millions of 'em. What the-what 'e wants 'em for I can't think. Millions!" pro The man was obviously serious, and Mr. Gandy became interested. At that moment a carter entered. The pantechnicon-man immediately ceeded to get into conversation with him. Presently he caught Mr. Gandy's eye and read in it curiosity. He was a man whose thirst was always a day in advance of its quenching, for today's liquor never seemed more than to satisfy yesterday's craving. Host Gandy fixed the pantechnicon-man with his eye, and then slowly transferred his gaze to the door of the barparlor. The man followed the eye of mine host with a grin, and sauntered towards the door, looked round, saw that he was right, passed through, softly closing it behind him. A minute later Mr. Gandy moved in the same direction, lifted the flap of the bar and passed into the room, also closing the door behind him. As he left the bar he touched a bell which produced Mrs. Gandy, in black, wearing much jewelry, and a musical-comedy smile as persistent as Mr. Gandy's wheeze. When the pantechnicon-man went forth from the bar-parlor it was with a thirst only half a day in arrears, a joyous look in his eye, and a vague uncertainty about his gait. Outside the "Dove and Easel" he lifted his green baize apron, a finger and thumb at each corner, and made a few shuffling movements with his feet, then he winked, grinned, and finally laughed as he passed on his way up the road. Mr. Gandy left the bar-parlor, spoke to Mrs. Gandy, and disappeared through the glass door into the private parlor. Two hours later Mr. Gandy reappeared. He had made up his mind. The pantechnicon-man felt as only a man can feel who has made up a fifty per cent deficit. His mind was working busily. He was obviously in possession of a secret that other people thought worth paying for. As he walked down the village street he pondered deeply, unsteadily. Presently he paused and slapped the green baize apron covering his leg. He walked over to where Mrs. Grinder was standing at the door of her little general shop. A remark of Mr. Gandy's had set him thinking, with the result that he was soon ringing the bell at The Towers. Half an hour later he walked down the drive of The Towers, the residence of Sir Charles Custance, J.P., a sovereign richer than when he entered, and the thirst deficit still further reduced. At the gates of The Towers he paused. Coming towards him was a dogcart, driven by a small, fierce looking little man. It was Mr. Roger Greenhales, who farmed, as a hobby, at a considerable yearly loss, to prove |