partial anticipation of the formula yéуρаπтαι (“it is written ") are of so fundamental a nature that I must refrain from discussing them here. I therefore only mention that he not only passes by many objections of mine in silence, but expressly acknowledges one instance: he has not subjected to examination the possibility "that characteristic expressions and phrases might well have been the common property of the language of the Church, and have been adopted in two writings, independently of each other." He says on this point, p. 806, "It did not fall within the scope of the volume I have published to do this." Why? The scope of the volume is to say which ecclesiastical writers betray acquaintance with the Gospels. Should there, then, be no inquiry whether their agreements with the Gospels have come into existence through reading of these Gospels, or independently?

One misunderstanding I may, in addition, clear up. I did not say, p. 609, as Dr Stanton renders my meaning, p. 805, "that the author of Barnabas, though he knew the saying to be a portion of oral tradition, yet used in regard to it the formula 'it is written."" This indeed would be, as he says, "an extraordinary suggestion, which seems to ignore altogether the natural force of words." In reality, from In reality, from my parallel statement that the author had erroneously taken the saying in Matthew (xxii. 14) as a quotation from a book actually recognised as Scripture, it clearly follows that my meaning was the following:-he was not aware that he knew the saying only from oral tradition, but believed, erroneonsly but quite firmly, that it stood in a book recognised as Holy Writ.

Lastly, a footnote of Dr Stanton's, p. 805, shows with what right I have contested his method in direct reference to the chief contents of his book. He says: "Dr Schmiedel credits Polycarp with indifference to the natural force of words, when he says that in Ad. Phil., vii. 1, his source might equally well have been 2 John 7 as 1 John iv. 2, 3. There is a difference of tense between these two which makes unquestionably some, and probably a very considerable, difference in the meaning, and Polycarp agrees with 1 John iv. 2, 3." Certainly Polycarp agrees with 1 John more nearly than with 2 John. But how, if at the time when he wrote, 1 John did not yet exist, but only 2 John? This was the question I brought forward. What has to be asked in face of this is not whether Polycarp better agrees with 1 John or 2 John, but only whether 2 John is sufficient to serve as the basis of the saying of Polycarp. So soon as this is granted-and I know not how it can be denied the proof that 1 John was known to Polycarp miscarries. When Dr Stanton notwithstanding asserts this, he assumes, as so often, what he must first prove. PAUL W. SCHMIEDEL.

ZÜRICH.

PRESENT ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY.1

(Hibbert Journal, July 1904, p. 722.)

THE conclusions arrived at in this paper are not very definitely, and certainly not dogmatically, stated, but the general impression is that the writer is distinctly in favour of the view that a future state is probable. Are there not many facts which point in the opposite direction?

Taking for a moment the scientific aspect of consciousness, we may assume, whether we choose to call consciousness a product or a function of the brain, that consciousness, as we know it, does not exist apart from the brain. Destroy the brain and we destroy consciousness, and destroy a portion of the brain and we destroy a portion of the consciousness. Following the gradual growth and development of the brain in the human body, we find a growing and developing consciousness. Now, in death we find a total and absolute destruction of the brain substance. Can we, under these circumstances, hope to find any continuity of consciousness?

Before proceeding further, it is well to state definitely what consciousness in a future state we should be willing to accept as a satisfactory solution of the problem of immortality. May we not fairly ask that the consciousness of the future state should comprise and comprehend the consciousness of the former state? For my part, a consciousness which does not comprehend the former state is not the same consciousness, or at most is a very incomplete consciousness.

Taking the states of consciousness on this earth, every normal human being is satisfied that on waking from sleep he is the same being, who has only suffered a temporary state of unconsciousness, and on passing through the great sleep of death the interruption of consciousness should surely be no greater than that experienced in sleep during the life on earth. Are we justified in believing that consciousness can awaken in a future state apart from the continued functioning of the brain substance? I cannot help feeling that there can be very few who have given much thought to the physiological aspect of the question, who can believe that continuity of consciousness can exist apart from continuity of brain substance.

Of the desire to live in a future state surely too much is made. We must own, perhaps, that in the normal and healthy condition of mind and body, the majority of persons desire a future state, that is, provided that the future state is at least not less happy than that of the majority in the present state. Can, however, this desire be used as any valid argument for the probability of a future state? For my own part, at the present moment, I have an ardent desire for a future state, in spite of which,

1 Dr Mellone wishes to correct the statement in his article to the effect that a questionnaire regarding human sentiment as to a future life was issued by both the English and American branches of the Society for Psychical Research. The statement should apply to the American branch only.-ED.

my reason tells me that as far as I can see such a state is not in store for me.

Again, if a future state is in store for man, can it be denied that at least the higher forms of animal life have an almost equal claim to a future state? Can those who claim a future state for man and annihilation for the higher apes have fully grasped the lessons of evolution? It seems incredible that anyone who has studied comparative anatomy closely should say that between the lowest forms of human life and the highest forms of animal life there is a clear and definite line drawn, on one side of which all are mortal, and on the other all are immortal.

If, on the other hand, the higher apes are immortal, it is a still more difficult question where to draw the line.

On the argument from the inequalities of life too much stress should not be laid. For my part, I feel that, in spite of appearances to the contrary, on the average the sum total of happiness, in various lives, is approximately equal. Those who have never suffered from lack of food, do not experience the keen pleasure which is found by those who have known the pangs of hunger, when their hunger is satisfied. Again, to the chronic invalid, a day of cessation of pain gives a keener sense of pleasure than is experienced by a year of health, in one who is normally healthy, and the same argument applies to all the other ills of mankind.

May we not also argue from the known to the unknown, i.e. from the known past to the unknown future? For my own part, I am satisfied that my consciousness did not exist in a previous state, and it was only with the gradual development of my material brain that my consciousness has developed, so that I reluctantly acquiesce in the belief that with the destruction of my material brain destruction of consciousness must also follow.

On the work of the spiritualists I will only touch. That there is a great and worthy field for research on these lines is not to be denied. The conclusion of most persons at the present moment would be that we cannot do more than suspend our judgment. In every case which has been investigated there is at least, of course, one material and living brain with its consciousness, often in an abnormal and ill-balanced condition, and to a brain in this state all types of conscious and unconscious selfdeception are possible, and the verdict drawn from this and other sources at the present moment must, I feel, be given as "not proven."

LONDON.

W. ERNEST Hazell.

REVIEWS

The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers. The Gifford Lectures, delivered in the University of Glasgow in Sessions 1900-1 and 1901-2.-By Edward Caird, LL.D., D.C.L.-2 vols. Pp. 382, 377. Glasgow: Maclehose & Sons.

THERE are many opinions about the Gifford Lectures, and in Scotland one hears a great deal about their uselessness. The grumblers, however, so far as my experience goes, are usually people who have little interest in the prescribed subject, or who are so ignorant of it that they expect to find, in ten or a dozen lectures, a handy, final and popular solution of problems which by their very nature are perennial. It was inevitable that some of the lecturers should make no great contribution to natural theology, and that others should be irrelevant in their discourse; but no one who is capable of appreciating the lectures of such men as Ward, Wallace, Pfleiderer, Fraser, Royce, James, and the Cairds (not to speak of those who have dealt mainly with comparative religion), can fail to be grateful for the solid and suggestive thinking and the aid to a spiritual view of the universe which we owe to the Gifford foundation. And no one of the lecturers has given us works of more permanent value than the two books of the Master of Balliol, The Evolution of Religion and The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers.

In the lectures on The Evolution of Religion, delivered at St Andrews in 1891 and 1892, Dr Caird inquired into the nature of the principle which makes man a religious being, "a being who in all ages has been conscious of himself as standing in vital relation to a supreme object of reverence and worship whom he calls God." He showed with great clearness the fallacy of seeking for this principle in what is merely common to all religions, maintaining that the "consciousness of God finds an adequate expression only in the highest forms of religious thought and experience," although "we can detect the beginnings of it, under very crude and elementary forms, even in the superstitions of savages." And he endeavoured to trace three great stages in the religious life of man : the stages of objective, subjective and universal religion. In the present set of lectures he passes from the evolution of religion to the evolution of

theology. "Theology is not religion; it is at best the philosophy of religion, the reflective reproduction and explanation of it "; or, as he puts it elsewhere, "theology is religion brought to self-consciousness, and endeavouring reflectively to criticise and interpret its own unconscious processes."

In the history or evolution of theology Dr Caird recognises three main periods, namely, "the period of Greek and Roman antiquity, the Christian era down to the Reformation, and the modern period." The characteristic of the first of these periods is the almost complete freedom of philosophy, which "at once breaks away from the tutelage of faith and asserts its independence, nay, claims to provide the only true basis on which the moral and spiritual life can be supported." The mythology from which it sprang and from which it too easily wcn its freedom is accounted of no value. "And one consequence of the facility with which criticism disposed of the primitive faiths of the ancient world was, that the purely intellectual life, the life of philosophical reflection, tended too much to withdraw upon itself and to disconnect itself from the life of feeling and impulse; to break away, in short, from the unconscious basis out of which the life of consciousness arises." The theology or philosophy of this period thus "tended in the end to an exclusive intellectualism, in which the form of thought was opposed to the matter, and the actual world was not idealised or spiritualised, but rather condemned as unideal and unspiritual." In the second period "the conceptions and methods of Greek philosophy were used to formulate and interpret" Christian ideas as to the nature of God and man and their relations to one another. The attitude of theology is the reverse of that which it took in the first period. Philosophy is no longer supreme and free, but is "in a strictly subordinate position." There is a real evolution of doctrine during this period; but theologians did not recognise it, believing "that they were simply maintaining an immovable truth," and that any alterations which were made in its expression were merely of a formal kind. Religion and philosophy were externally combined, and as a result there was artificially produced a system of fossilised dogma. "It was inevitable in the long run that the reflective power, called forth by this imperfect attempt to work out the consequences of the new view of life, should turn against its own products." Thus the first characteristic of the modern period, beginning with the Renaissance and the Reformation, is the reassertion of the ancient freedom of Greek speculation. "Modern philosophy, and the theology or view of the highest things,' in which it culminates, is, like Greek philosophy, free speculation. It deals with religion as it deals with the other experiences of life, which it tries with perfect impartiality and disinterestedness to interpret. And when any attempt has been made to limit its freedom, it has asserted itself in a sceptical and even a revolutionary spirit against all dogma whatsoever, and even against Christianity itself, so far as it was identified with dogma." But the theology of the modern period could not long remain negative or indifferent to popular