THES

recently delivered at the Royal Institution, will hereafter be quoted as a distinguishing mark of the present time. The last twenty years will constitute a critical era in the history of English opinion. They have formed one of those intervals, during which the great wave of human intelligence seems to retire, and so leaves us momentarily doubtful of the advance of the tide. At such periods the forces at work are unusually complex, the tendencies of public opinion unusually hard to ascertain. It will require the impartiality of a future age, clearly to appreciate the intellectual and religious movements of that which is just expiring. We use the last words significantly. Every such season of apparent rest or retrogression is in truth occupied by a rebellion against the principles or theories which ruled at its commencement, and its close is marked either by their overthrow or by the suppression of the revolt. We believe that in the present case the imminence of the latter issue is indicated by many symptoms, among which not the least remarkable is that afforded by these lectures.

But though to posterity must be left the task of more minutely unravelling the passing controversy, we think we can hardly err in stating its general character. has been a struggle to substitute

It

credulity for faith. For faith,-the deep conviction and separate treasure of each individual man, which leaves him in perfect freedom, and is his evidence of things not seen,— an effort has been made to substitute a social and organized credulity, such as can only exist upon the sympathy of panic, which grows by indulgence, and which holds every individual in a state of tutelage and dependence. Mysticism and sym

bolism have been the order of the day. Of the most outrageous fables we have been sedulously taught that it is better to believe than to inquire. The terrors of the nursery have been held up to our admiration. Fetiche-worship has been encouraged in every form. Every art has been used to foster that secret dread and devout ignorance with which our Saxon forefathers used to regard the rites of their goddess Hertha. And with so much success, that we should not be surprised if any one, curious enough to make a midnight visit to the churches of Belgravia on the approaching Midsummer-eve, were to find more than one porch occupied by a high-born damsel awaiting the phantom of her future bridegroom.

For our obscurantists raised a spirit which they could not lay. The young ladies who lost themselves among the pretty mysticisms of La Motte Fouqué, and sighed for intercourse with the angelic world,

VOL. L. NO. CCXCV.

were becoming gradually prepared to accept the most grotesque or profane gratification of their enthusiastic longings. We may congratulate our country that it has not had its affair of La Salette. It contributed to the success of the reactionists that they were encountered rather with bigotry than reason. Those who could, and perhaps should, have employed the latter, were content to abide in peace the issue of the contest. Such content might be enjoyed the less selfishly, inasmuch as the retrogression was almost limited to one section of society. It was only among the highest ranks and the disciples of the older universities, that prosperity attended the revival of ignorance. The middle and lower orders were nearly wholly uninfected. No doubt this was mainly due to the strong and deep-rooted individualism which their hereditary faith has nurtured in the great body of our countrymen; but the result was also favoured, as we shall see more particularly in the course of this review, by a great difference in education.

But before long things were to reach a pass which should ruffle even the calm repose of science. We do not indeed impute the popular delusions of the past year directly to any religious teaching. We are quite aware that they might arise at least as easily out of a superstitious scepticism as out of an enthusiastic credulity. There had been in fact, not only here, but also in America and on the continent, a retreat to the same result from very opposite quarters. But that at last sceptic and mystic, materialist and spiritualist, should coalesce in outraging reason, should positively rival each other in a war with the laws of nature,-and should succeed to a great extent in making society forget its common sense; the possibility of this result, we say, was in no small degree due to that deliberate and persevering teaching, which had represented the exercise of the judgment as dangerous or sinful, had demanded instead a blind slavery of the intellect, and had made gullibility the standard of desert.

But whatever was its origin, the popular credulity was sufficiently

striking to startle even science from its repose. What sort of education, it was asked, could that people possess, which was liable to be seized by such an ecstasy of unreason? Here was a plain material phenomenon, palpable to the touch, and visible to the eye. Wherever you went, you saw or heard of a ring of people, sober enough in general, rushing madly round a table, and protesting that the activity was involuntary; that the table, spinning by some unknown force, dragged them irresistibly along. The motion of the table was variously explained. Some attributed it unhesitatingly to demoniacal agency; the tables, they said, were just turned by the devil, and those who did not like his company were best away from such exhibitions. But the general opinion was in favour of some unknown or occult force, a kind of electricity, quotha, quite new to science, and having power to subvert all the known laws of nature. And now we come to the most striking, and in our view the most instructive, feature of the case. The tableturners refused to entertain any rational explanation of their beloved mystery. They recoiled from every decisive experiment. They declined to think. In the state of mind thus disclosed, there was more than mere ignorance; there was a positive incapacity for acquiring knowledge. Well, therefore, might inquiry arise as to the education which could have occasioned such intellectual blindness; well, especially, might men of science, to whose department the phenomena in question belonged, ponder gravely over the means, not merely of removing the present ignorance, but of securing a tone of mind in the public which should prevent its recurrence; just as the peace for which our country is now fighting, is intended, not only to exact satisfaction for the past outrages, but also to guarantee the continent against the future rapacity, of a barbarian despot.

The lectures which form our present subject are eminently adapted to forward this most desirable object. In almost every one the study of some science is strongly recommended, not as an end, but as a