preting what we call natural law as a condition of the acts of an intelligent Will; second, in the assertion of something "spontaneous," a real province of free-will, in the acts of the human mind; third, in the vindication of the argument from design,* in the interpretation of nature. Each of these points, as here presented, though against the present fashion of scientific thinking, is not only fair ground for philosophical discussion, but is necessarily opened as soon as the existence of God is admitted, not merely as a matter of belief, but even of speculation. Deism, as De Quincey has well said, is understood to admit the very least that can be included in the belief of a God; but Theism is understood as including very much more,

"the belief in God as a moral governor of the world, for example." The laws of which science informs us give us simply the "sequences of phenomena," and, as included in these, the properties of the elements which are grouped to form the world. But every single fact which science attempts to explain, implies the grouping and co-working of many laws; and their intelligent co-ordination must be expounded (if at all) by another philosophy than that which deals with the phenomena merely as such. In qualification of the merely naturalistic definition of law, the analysis in the first chapter of this book is comprehensive and just.

Any person well instructed as to the real facts of nature must shrink from carrying to its last results the argument from "final causes." As Mr. Lewes asks, How does this argument hold, when we find the development of cancer-cells going on by the same laws of organic growth that built up the nobler life they so cruelly ravage and destroy? and no one will be so bold as to attempt the answer. Faith cuts the knot which theory never can untie. Patience, trust, and love can, and in fact do, reconcile themselves to those natural evils which our best philosophy of "morbid growths" can hold up only as matters of curiosity, or else of horror. Faith, we know, can make no claim to the forbearance or the respect of science on its own ground. But it occupies different ground. Its province is to assert the postulates of a philosophy that is to satisfy the conscience and heart, as well as the understanding. And, in regarding the universe and human life as a whole, we are entitled to the benefit of

* Which it distinguishes from final causes; this latter implying a knowledge of the ultimate motive of the Creator, which the human mind can no way pretend to.

all those analogies in detail, which show how Law, in human things, is only (so to speak) the raw material for Will to work on.

Again, in interpreting the facts of the outward world, there is a difference between claiming to understand the ultimate purpose, or "final cause," of the creation, and tracing in special instances the marks of intelligent design. Science is inestimable and strong in tracing the course by which things came to be as they are: it is worthless and weak in attempting more than a simple co-ordination of the facts. Mr. Spencer, in some very interesting and curious chapters of his "Principles of Biology," undertakes to show how the functions of the liver may have been specialized, from a general function of excretion existing in a diffused state in the blood and in other organs; and how the complex digestive organs of ruminating animals may have been developed, under the conditions of" natural selection" and "struggle for existence," from a stomach as simple as a dog's; that is, he traces, with great subtilty, the line of analogy, or similarity of function, and suggests an actual order of facts to correspond. This business of the scientific understanding is very entertaining, and perfectly fair, as far as it goes; but, so far from pretending to account for facts, its postulate is that, at bottom, there is no accounting for them. To trace, however curiously, the path of creative intelligence, is certainly no help towards dispensing with that intelligence. No sane mind pretends to explain the way in which it works; but no wildest conjecture of anthropomorphism is so insane as that which finds any satisfaction in the theory, that impersonal Force, working upward from "undifferentiated" elements of things, accomplishes the facts without any directing intelligence at all. Not that Mr. Spencer himself says as much, but sometimes his arguments seem to mean it. And there is always a class of unreflecting persons, who will understand them so.

Mr. Darwin's theory-the favorite one among the naturalists of the present day—appears to "co-ordinate" a larger range and greater variety of facts than any other; and so is accepted by some minds as if it were a real help in accounting for the facts themselves. Mr. Darwin himself says, that, logically, it ought to account for all organic forms by development from two-perhaps one of the very simplest. But the theory hides two assumptions: first, that there is an enormous spontaneous impulse, wholly unaccounted for, towards unlimited variety of development, held in check only (not created) by the "conditions of existence" to which living organisms

must conform; and, secondly, a tendency, equally spontaneous and unaccounted for, towards the prodigious complication of structure, which we find in the higher forms of organization. Let us take a single example. Professor Tyndall, in his recent lectures on Sound, after describing the curious structure of the ear, so well known in our popular anatomies and natural theologies, mentions the recent discovery of what he describes as a "lute" of three thousand strings, an apparatus of inconceivable delicacy, afloat in the watery substance of the inner ear, and designed, apparently, to convey to the nerve the varieties of pitch in sound. Certainly no one will pretend that any conceivable law of "natural selection" or advantage in the struggle of existence, can help us to imagine, much less account for, the process by which this amazing instrument was devised, and put where it was wanted. Not that "faith" can account for it, either; but "faith" distinctly challenges and denies any assertion which seems to imply, that it could have come about without a conscious purpose somewhere, and a plastic skill, or that we have no right to say it was meant to be so. If science ever seems to make that assertion, science itself refutes it by its constant discovery of facts, exhibiting higher and higher degrees of that shaping intelligence, which, without any thought of conceiving or comprehending it, we ascribe to God.

We have followed the line of thought, not of illustration, of the book before us. Its interest to the intelligent reader will be not any special profundity of argument or novelty of view, to which it makes no pretension; but that it attempts to state the familiar argument from design, as distinct from that of final causes, which it does not attempt, under the conditions demanded by the present state of science. One chapter, that on the power of flight in birds, we have already spoken of. Another, equally curious and beautiful, reasons against the limitations of the Darwinian theory, from the facts gathered respecting the very interesting group of hummingbirds. Of these exquisite creatures, four hundred and thirty species have been registered and described, — each, so far as the habits of the bird are concerned, as distinct from every other as goats and sheep; while the whole group is confined to the single continent of America. Between some of them the difference is so slight as a crimson tuft, perhaps, instead of one blue or green; yet, with these delicate boundaries, there is no crossing of breed, or confusion of species. The facts, which are set forth with some fulness, are employed by the

author, first, to show that delight in beauty and variety of color (which can have no supposable advantage in the struggle for existence) is as much a purpose in creation as mere utility of function; and, secondly, to show how far he accepts the theory in question, since he holds, not that each species of humming-bird is an independent creation, but that they are intentional modifications of the original type, hatched in the ordinary way, under special conditions, and thenceforth separate and distinct. Scientifically, the thought is a little confused; but here, where we are all out of our depth, poetry is perhaps as true as science, and a good deal more attractive. Even if we have to invent a génie or fairy of the humming-birds, commissioned to indulge its loveliest dreams or its queerest fancy in those quaint, mobile forms, it is, after all, no wilder untruth than the idol which some have made of that bleak abstraction, "the Unknowable.” The "Force, on which all things depend," if we undertake to sum up a little part of what that phrase implies, - must include not less, but rather more, than what our arguments for natural theism have implied, in speaking of the Wisdom, the Skill, the Forethought, the living Providence, the intelligent Purpose, the sovereign Will, of God.

J. H. A.

HISTORY AND POLITICS.

THE Addresses and Speeches included in Mr. Winthrop's volume* are arranged chronologically, and without reference to the subjects of which they treat; but for our present purpose they may be classified under two distinct heads, the first comprising the political speeches; and the second, and much the larger division, consisting of commemorative and miscellaneous addresses. Of the speeches under the first head, we do not propose to speak in detail. Many of the questions discussed in them have ceased to be of practical interest, while they are still of too recent importance to be calmly considered now. It is enough to observe, that they are uniformly characterized by boldness, frankness, and courtesy, and by an unfaltering love of country. However much any one may have differed with Mr. Winthrop, no honest opponent can fail to bear witness to the ability and dignity with which he advocated the views he had deliberately adopted and firmly held, and to the spotless purity of his motives. To the consideration

* Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions, from 1852 to 1867. By ROBERT C. WINTHROP. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1867. 8vo, pp. xiii, 725.

of every question he brought a ripe and various scholarship; his arguments are clearly and strongly stated; the style is smooth, compact, and polished; and nowhere is there a better presentation of the doctrines and policy of the political party of which he was so distinguished an ornament. As illustrations of one phase of our recent political history, they must possess a permanent interest and value not easily exaggerated.

Turning now from the political discussions, which cover, indeed, only a hundred and fifty pages of Mr. Winthrop's volume, -to the more attractive field of literary endeavor, it is impossible not to be struck by the variety and interest of the topics embraced in the remaining pages. The obligations and responsibilities of educated men; the precious memory of the founders of New England, of the fathers of the Revolution, and of the historians and scholars who, in our own time, have illustrated and adorned American literature; the needs and prospects of American agriculture; the history of music in New England; the necessity of a more systematic organization of our local charities; the claims of the citizen soldier in a period of civil strife; the importance of the religious instruction of the young, and of a wider circulation of religious books; the various relations of luxury and the fine arts; and the worth of Christianity as a remedy for social and political evils, these, and such as these, are the themes which he has touched only to elucidate and embellish. Many of the addresses, it is true, are extremely brief, covering not more than five or six printed pages, and presenting only a single aspect of the subject to which they relate; but all are suggestive, and several are careful, elaborate, and well-nigh exhaustive discussions.

In dealing with subjects so various and so dissimilar as these, Mr. Winthrop exhibits in a high degree the versatility of power, the ready command of his resources, and the aptness of illustration, which might naturally have been anticipated as the fruit of his long and brilliant career in our State Legislature and in Congress. Joined with these are a ripeness of scholarship and a familiarity with general literature too seldom exhibited in this country by the successful statesman or politician. While there is never any thing like a pedantic display, we everywhere find the rich traces of early and later study of the Greek and Roman classics, of a wide acquaintance with English literature, and of careful research in our own annals, and among our own early writers as well as their more distinguished