portion of his task to consist in describing the pitched battles and the desultory skirmishes which have taken place, because imperfect knowledge has been mistaken for moral obliquity. The time, however, has not arrived for writing such a history, though the work has been frequently attempted; but these attempts have only served to swell the list of partisan literature. The warfare is still being waged, and while it lasts there can be no calm resting-place of observation for the historian. Whether it will ever cease no one can be blamed for doubting, and they who think it will end must not be surprised if they be derided as visionary and fanciful. Still, though the fact of antagonism be not done away with, the spirit of the contest is changed, and the change most will allow to be for the better. Men do not now so often rush at the conclusion that when their opponents make an inaccurate statement they are intentionally mendacious; there is not quite so much recklessness in accusing of atheism those whose ideas of the Deity differ either in kind or expression from one's own; and with regard to the treatment of Holy Scripture, there is an abatement of that most wild and pernicious line of defence which may be called the all-or-nothing principle,' because it poises the vast and glorious edifice of revealed truth upon the point of a single incidental statement of some fact, either of history or science, and then declares, with an audacity which makes one shudder, that if that single statement can be disproved, the whole structure must fall to the ground. These, to say the least of them, are cheering signs, and their general effect must be to dispose men's minds to listen to the persuasive and impartial voice of any calm and judicious thinker who may speak out in the interests of peace. Such a voice has been lifted up by the Duke of Argyll, in the volume which now lies before us. Its tendency is decidedly pacific, its tone is temperate, its conclusions are sound, its suggestions are entitled to respect for their manifest sincerity and fairness. The book, in short, is an Eirenicon in the contest between theology and science.

The principal matter of this work has been before the public under different forms for some time, though its materials have only recently been collected within one cover and under one title. Four out of the seven chapters (now expanded with new matter) of which it is comprised, appeared in Good Words in the early half of 1865. The first chapter was originally published in the Edinburgh Review, of October, 1862. The last two chapters formed the substance of Presidential Addresses to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

In the opening chapter our author deals with the questions, The Supernatural-What is it? What do we mean by it? How do we define it?' and he complains that although these

questions are of first importance, yet we find them seldom distinctly put, and still more seldom distinctly answered.' And this remark may be extended to almost the whole employment of language in the enunciation of philosophical ideas. Logomachy, after all, was the battle chiefly waged in the schools; and even now that the facilities of the press give the greatest opportunities for accuracy, and for the correction of errors in the use of words, it is to be feared that controversy is still as much taken up with disputes about the terms employed as ever. Nature' and 'supernatural' are two expressions very freely used in the discussions which deal with subjects that touch the confines of theology and science; but the freedom with which they are used does not so much betoken the perfect mastery over their significations which their employers possess, as betray the carelessness which springs from ignorance. The students, and even the masters in science, have a rough-and-ready way of treating nature' as a term with elastic boundaries, which can be stretched in any direction that for the time suits their own mental conception of the subject they are engaged about, and which also can be drawn in and narrowed down to the small area of their own observation. The whole region beyond the limits which they thus capriciously appoint to 'nature,' they, with like caprice, designate as 'supernatural.' Consequently, these two terms, which ought to be most carefully and perspicuously applied in philosophical investigations, come to be treated with strange levity and inconsiderateness. Nature' they are partial to; the supernatural' they do not care for; accordingly we find 'nature' made to stand as an equivalent expression for the space within the horizon of the investigator's own knowledge: it is his world. The supernatural,' on the other hand, isbehind the hills' of his knowledge, or at least of his present interests. He uses it as a synonym for the unknown, and even for the unknowable. He casts suspicion upon its existence, and behaves with a scant respect towards its claims to be considered as having weight in settling the boundaries of his favourite 'nature.'

On the other hand, theologians, it must be admitted, are scarcely less partial and irrational in their own use of the words 'nature' and supernatural.' They have an unfortunate way of treating 'nature as a sort of impious rival of their favourite 'supernatural.' We say this is unfortunate, because it tinges with a narrow jealousy their whole treatment of scientific questions, and gives to their intercourse with men of science the appearance of unfriendly reserve. Their minds are prepossessed with the notion that the 'supernatural,' whatever it may mean (for they, no more than the men of science, are clear as to what it does, or ought to, mean), is that which they must defend at all hazards

against the hostile encroachments of the 'philosophers.' They are haunted by the fear that some sacrilege is intended in every step which advances the progress of human knowledge in physical science; and they seem to assume that the supremacy of the supernatural' is threatened, and its dignity insulted, by every success achieved in scientific investigation. Some allowance however, should, in common fairness, be made for this unhappy conduct of theologians. If they have been jealous, the men of science have been presumptuous; if they have exhibited an unworthy alarm for the position and claims of the supernatural,' the science - men have excited their fears by their undisguised contempt for all that they did not choose to include within the province which they themselves assigned to 'nature.'

It is clear, then, that the faults on both sides spring from the same cause, namely the neglect of having previously ascertained the meanings to be assigned to the words 'nature' and 'supernatural' before making such free use of them in discussion. It is not necessary that these meanings should always be the same -that is to say, that their boundaries should be unalterably and for ever determined. What is required is precision in the use of language. No intelligent thinker would desire to forge out of the definitions of words fetters to cramp the action of free inquiry. All useful ends, therefore, would be sufficiently attained if the same words were scrupulously used in the same sense that had been already agreed upon, until, for good reason and after careful statement, some enlarged or otherwise modified range of meaning be adopted. In theology it is well known what confusion blurs the pages of many excellent writers, in consequence of the two distinct meanings of the term 'faith,' namely, 'belief' and 'trust,' being carelessly interchanged; and it can at once be seen what a chaos of ideas would be produced by the word 'natural' being indiscriminately employed as opposed, at one time to 'mechanical,' at another to artificial,' at another to human,' at another to divine.'

Towards clearing up the obscurity which hangs over philosophical discussions through a careless employment of the terms 'nature' and 'supernatural,' it is the chief merit of the Duke of Argyll's book to contribute some very valuable suggestions. It is notorious how often definitions fail in making plain the meanings of the words defined; and this frequently arises from the definer supposing that a definition must be dogmatic in its tone, and brief in its expression. Our author avoids this error by not attempting formal definitions. At the same time he renders efficient aid towards attaining the purpose of formal definitions; and no one, who needs such help, can read the first

6

chapter without feeling that he has acquired a clearer understanding of what nature' and 'supernatural' should mean. The following quotations may be put in evidence :

'Seeing the boundless extent of our ignorance of the natural laws which regulate so many of the phenomena around us, and still more of so many of the phenomena within us, nothing can be more reasonable than to conclude, when we see something which is to us a wonder, that somehow, if we only knew how, it is "all right," all according to the constitution and course of nature. But then, to justify this conclusion, we must understand nature in the largest sense, as including all that is

"In the round ocean, and in the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man."

We must understand it as including every agency which we see entering, or can conceive from analogy as capable of entering, into the causation of the world. First and foremost among these is the agency of our own mind and will."-P. 7.

'Let us never forget, then, that the agency of man is of all others the most natural-the one with which we are most familiar-the only one, in fact, which we can be said, even in any measure, to understand. When any wonderful event can be referred to the contrivance or ingenuity of man, it is thereby at once removed from the sphere of the supernatural, as ordinarily understood.-P. 8.

From this point our author proceeds to point out that the limitations people put upon nature,' by either distinguishing it from human will, or by restricting it to those effects the causes of which we know and see, cannot be maintained. Thus step by step he leads on to the conclusion that nature' is co-extensive with the constitution and order of the universe, both mental, moral, and physical. This, as our readers well know, is no new or original line of reasoning. They will recall to mind Butler's words: Though one were to allow any confused undetermined sense, which people please to put upon the word natural, it 'would be a shortness of thought scarce credible to imagine, that no system or course of things can be so, but only what we see at present: especially whilst the probability of a future life, or the natural immortality of the soul, is admitted upon the 'evidence of reason; because this is really both admitting and denying at once, a state of being different from the present to 'be natural. But the only distinct meaning of that word is, 'stated, fixed, or settled: since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e. to effect 'it continually, or at stated times, as what is supernatural or 'miraculous does to effect it for once. And hence it must follow, 'that persons' notion of what is natural will be enlarged in 'portion to their greater knowledge of the works of God, and the 'dispensations of His Providence.' 1 This is only one of a

pro

thousand instances in which the great thinker of the last century anticipated, if not the whole ramifications of those arguments which are from time to time being advanced for the solution of the problems that lie on the confines of science and theology, at least the germs of thought out of which the more modern reasonings spring.

The passage just quoted from the Bishop, so far as it tends to define natural' and 'supernatural,' contains nothing inconsistent with the line of argument adopted by the Duke. In fact the sum and substance of the Duke's reasonings in his first chapter amount simply to the negative inference, that there is no reason deducible from what we at present know of the constitution and order of the universe, for excluding any part of it, either mental, physical, or moral, from the limits of the term 'nature,'-an inference which finds almost identical expression in the above-cited words of Butler. But here comes in the divergence of our author from the Bishop-so far, that is to say, as two writers can be said to diverge from each other who are not writing upon exactly the same subject. The Duke of Argyll pushes the boundaries of nature' so far and wide on all sides, as to leave nothing outside of them but the Deity himself; for, though not explicitly, certainly implicitly, he includes all the works and workings of God, as well those commonly called natural as those called miraculous, within the limits of nature;' at least he gives such an aspect to miracles, that it is cast upon any objector to show cause why they should not be included within the region of nature. But in order not to misunderstand him upon this point, one must first have fully and carefully appreciated how vast is the region of what he calls nature. The Bishop, on the contrary, while he fully recognises all known and all unknown effects of an intelligent agent that are wrought continually and at stated times, as being properly called 'natural,' assumes that there are certain effects which do not answer his definition of natural, i.e. stated, fixed, or settled,' and which he accordingly calls supernatural or miraculous.' In a word, if a disproof of miracles being supernatural were established, it would not contradict any direct statement of the Duke's, but it would contradict an assertion of the Bishop's. In fact our author accepts frankly enough Mr. Lecky's inference from his line of argument that his notion of a miracle does not generically differ 'from a human act, though it would still be strictly available for 'evidential purposes.

6

1 See note on p. 15. It may be interesting to quote in this connexion a passage from a very profound and masterly work on legal science, in which the conceptions entertained by the ancient Greek philosophers of nature and her law are set forth :