What has been done in France to carry out this counsel we all know. We know also what it is desired to do in England. Let us hear what Mr. Morley has to say upon this momentous subject, in words written originally in 1874, and reprinted, unaltered, in 1886:

"A small and temporary improvement may really be the worst enemy of a great and permanent improvement, unless the first is made on the lines and in the direction of the second. And so it may, if it be successfully palmed off upon a society as actually being the second. In such a case as this and our legislation presents instances of the kind-the small reform, if it be not made with reference to some large progressive principle, and with a view to further extension of its scope, makes it all the more difficult to return to the right line and direction when improvement is again demanded. To take an example which is now very familiar to us all. The Education Act of 1870 was of the nature of a small reform. No one pretends that it is anything approaching to a final solution of a complex problem. But the government insisted, whether rightly or wrongly, that their Act was as large a measure as public opinion was at that moment ready to support. At the same time it was clearly agreed among the Government and the whole of the party' at their backs, that at some time or other, near or remote, if public instruction was to be made genuinely effective, the private, voluntary, or denominational system would have to be replaced by a national system. To prepare for this ultimate replacement was one of the points to be most steadily borne in mind, however slowly and tentatively the process might be conducted. Instead of that, the authors of the Act deliberately introduced provisions for extending and strengthening the very system which will have eventually to be superseded. They thus, by their small reform, made the future great reform the more difficult of achievement." *

*Compromise, p. 230.

me especially worthy of Much might be said

These words seem to being deeply pondered. upon them. All I shall say at present is, that I have reason to think Mr. Morley ill-informed as to that "clear agreement" of which he speaks. I have myself been assured by the two statesmen chiefly responsible for the Education Act of 1870, that it was not designed as a step towards the supersession of voluntary and denominational schools; that neither of them had the least intention to bring about the "future great reform" which Mr. Morley so carnestly desires, and desires naturally enough, because he is well aware that it would supply the most effective means of undermining the Christianity of England, and of making straight the paths of the new gospel.

CHAPTER IV.

THE REVOLUTION AND SCIENCE.

*

M. VACHEROT, in the extremely interesting work from which I have more than once quoted in the course of this volume, tells us that the new ideal of the public order is a society where science will be allsufficient: "une société où la science suffise à tout, à la théologie, à la morale, à l'éducation, aussi bien qu'à l'industrie." There is in the present day a great, I might say an almost unanimous, consensus of testimony to the same effect from Revolutionary publicists. On every side we hear that the Revolution must be, that it is, scientific. The word is almost invariably employed in that mutilated sense to which it is now so generally narrowed. Science, in the mouth of ninety-nine people out of a hundred-the proportion is probably larger-is used as a synonym for physics. The very use is a tacit, in most cases no doubt an unconscious, recognition of what Mr. Morley calls "the great positive principle that we can know only phenomena, and can know them only experien

* La Démocratie, p. 80. Of course so accomplished a metaphysician as M. Vacherot does not use "science" as a synonym for physics.

tially;" a principle which he accounts-as we have seen" the cardinal condition of strength for times when theology lies in decay."* This great positive principle is certainly very highly esteemed in the Revolutionary Church as a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. What chiefly distinguishes the latest from the earlier phases of the new gospel is, indeed, its proclamation of itself as scientific. The original Jacobins refused to defer, even for one brief hour, the pleasure of butchering Lavoisier, upon the ground that the Republic had no need of chemists. The Jacobins of to-day are wiser in their generation, and seek in the laboratory" a solid formula" for their politics. It is upon "natural truths," they urge, that the foundation of the public order must rest. Metaphysics and transcendentalism, and, still more, "all religion and all religiosity," they execrate as mere shadows, serving but to divert men's attention from phenomenal realities, which are the sole realities, and to hinder progress in the material arts of life, which alone is progress. For them physical sciences are the only sciences. And the generalisation of those sciences, founded upon the teachings of the late Mr. Charles Darwin, and called after him, is preeminently dear to them.

Why this is so, we shall see presently. Here let me, in vindication of a great name, point out that,

as much Platonism is vulgarly current for which we shall search in vain the philosopher of Academe, as the Lutheranism of the present day consists largely of opinions of which the founder of Protestantism was guiltless, so a great deal passes for Darwinism which is not to be found in the writings of Mr. Darwin. What the lifelong labours of that patient and conscientious inquirer really established, I shall have occasion to consider by-and-by. I am for the moment concerned with the signification which the word Darwinism bears in common parlance throughout Europe. And this will be best seen if we go to Germany. There it is that most of the world's cerebration is performed. There the doctrine of Mr. Darwin was eagerly embraced long before it had obtained credit among ourselves. And there it has been developed, with enthusiastic devotion and singular hardihood, by a school of savants, who have sought in it the key to well-nigh all the world's enigmas. Foremost among these is Professor Haeckel, whose writings have unquestionably done more than Mr. Darwin's own for the diffusion of what is generally known as Darwinism, not only in the Professor's native country, but in France, and it may perhaps be said in England too. The account which he himself gives of his aim is, that he has "endeavoured to bind together in a philosophy Darwin's facts; to view them in the light of general conceptions." But, in truth, speculation occupies a much greater place than fact