the fittest is worked out; or that moral sentiment
and dogma have been evolved through prehistoric
conditions, although it must be doubted whether
Mr. Darwin ever properly apprehended the essential
nature of ethics. These facts are among the assured
conquests of the modern mind

But these facts are fatal to the fundamental propositions
of the Revolutionary dogma; to its doctrine of the
natural, inalienable, and imprescriptible rights of
the individual; to its doctrine of absolute reason;
to its doctrine of the social contract; to its doctrine
of the aboriginal goodness of man; to its shibboleth
of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity "; to its panacea
of education; and to the optimism underlying it

The absolute antinomy between the postulates of the Revolution and the truths summed up in the evolutionary formula is certain. Does the like antinomy exist between those truths and the transcendental conceptions on which religion is based?

All religions rest upon an ethical feeling. The central idea of Christianity is this: of the root of moral obligation in the Divine nature, and in man's filial relation to it

Religion, and especially Christianity, proclaims Deity and
Immortality as the crown of the moral law, whose
existence, and dictates, and absolute character reason
discloses. How do these transcendental conceptions
accord with the verities of physical science?
is the question.

That

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The answer is indicated in the dictum of Aquinas, that "there is no knowledge without phantasmata; " that is, that phenomena, to be really apprehended, must be presented to the understanding by the imaginative faculty

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The domain of physical science is the sphere of sense perception

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The evolutionary formula is not concerned with the origin of spirtual or vital forces

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The moral sense may have been evolved as Mr. Darwin supposes, but you do not explain a thing by tracing it back to its rudimentary forms, or by exhibiting the course of its development .

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In the moral sense there is something transcending organic life and sensation. Relativity is the last word of Darwinism. The Categorical Imperative is absolute. 125

Mr. Darwin's facts point to, and harmonise with, a psychic basis of life and Directive Intelligence

Thus the whole universe is transfigured before us, and we catch some glimpse of its real meaning. The supreme law which rules through it, is a law of tendency upwards, of striving after perfection. This is the true law of evolution

These considerations commended to men of good will who rage against Mr. Darwin's doctrine without understanding it

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CHAPTER V.

THE REVOLUTION AND ART.

Naturalism in art a note of the Revolution

M. Zola's Nana may be regarded as a type of Natural

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M. Zola's apology for Naturalism as the manifestation in art of the Revolutionary idea.

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M. Zola contends that the object of Naturalism is a return to nature; his view of nature

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The old view of nature

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Difference between the old and the new estheticism

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M. Zola contends that the novelistic and dramatic art,

like all other art, must be scientific, physiological,
pathological, positive, in order to harmonise with the
Revolutionary spirit. He claims as his great fore-
father, Diderot, and asserts that Stendhal, Gustave
Flaubert, and Balzac were of the same school

M. Zola does, in some sort, represent the movement in literature initiated by Diderot, but he has no warrant for numbering Stendhal, Gustave Flaubert, and Balzac among the prophets of experimental art

His parallel between his school in literature, and the school in medicine of which Claude Bernard was the great light, is fair enough

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And his claim that his school is the popular artistic expression of the Revolution seems unquestionably true

This is the especial value of his writings

The true mission of the artist

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CHAPTER VI.

THE REVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY.

The word Democracy is commonly used to denote the polity in contemporary Europe which is informed by the Revolutionary dogma

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This Democracy has very little in common with the democracies of pre-Christian Europe or of the Middle Ages

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Ancient and medieval democracies were the result of fierce struggles, and of the triumph of the most highly endowed races; they rested upon a basis of fact, and were, even in their most popular form, essentially aristocratic; citizenship in them being regarded not as a natural right but as a hardly won privilege

The Revolutionary Democracy of the present day, on the other hand, starts with the proposition that man, quà man, possesses all the highest attributes of citizenship, and is based on Rousseau's theory of the abstract rights, innate, inalienable, and imprescriptible, of humanity in an imaginary state of nature

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Its issue cannot be doubtful; the doctrines of absolute political equality, and of the supreme right of the numerical majority-relatively poor-must issue in Socialism

This is the hell which awaiteth the nation that loveth and maketh a lie. And a lie the Revolutionary

dogma assuredly is. Every one of the propositions
which constitute its ideal of man and of society, is
demonstrably, is obviously, false

Bishop Butler's question, whether nations can go mad, is answered by a Century of Revolution. A nation given over to the strong delusion to believe the Revolutionary dogma, can hardly be accounted sane.

Still, not by its mendacity, but by the truth latent in it, does any lie live. In the Revolutionary dogma are hidden various verities

But the great fact called Modern Democracy is one thing. The Revolutionary dogma is another. There is no necessary connection between them. In truth, the work of the Revolution for Modern Democracy has been chiefly to pervert and falsify it, and to retard indefinitely its development

The phase called Democracy into which Europe has entered, is the latest term in a movement which has been in progress since the beginning of our civilisa

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