of destruction to the opposing theory; it is not in itself, though it contains the suggestion of, a positive constructive principle of philosophy. The use made by Mr. Ward of his successful demonstration of intuition as a possibility was to clear the ground for the production of other instances-in geometry and ethics. And in dealing with these questions, he does not if we may judge from the account in the present work-attempt to present his philosophy as a complete scheme; he shows the incapacity of empirical principles to prove universal truths. You have, in memory, an instance always before you, he seems to argue, of this philosophical incapacity. The strain, to which you are obliged to put your principles in dealing with mathematics and morality, is a sign of a similar incapacity in a much more abstruse region. Mr. Ward had implicitly in his possession that which seems to us to be the key to the whole position. The reason why the memory cannot be explained on the basis of empiricism is that in all thought the mind stands outside the stream of mere impressions, and by its own activity formulates them into thoughts. Memory is the typical instance, as St. Augustine knew, of the permanence of self-consciousness in all the life of the soul. This is not merely a difficult instance for the empirical thinkers; it is the substitution of a new principle of philosophical interpretation, valid, as we think, where theirs breaks down. They contrast the impressions as they come with the work of the mind. Regarding the work of the mind as essentially arbitrary, they ascribe superior reality to the unmodified impressions-if any such can be found. Ward showed the failure of this method in a conspicuous instance; the speculations of Green and some other idealist philosophers have carried on Ward's argumentation still further, and shown the fallacy of contrasting the real with the work of the mind. This is not so much a correction of an error of Ward's as an exposition of a principle already contained implicitly in his argument. The process of memory is a supreme instance, intelligible to the most uninstructed common sense, of the constitutive activity of the mind in all thought. But we can go further than this. Mr. Ward dealt with the philosophy of Mill before the doctrine of evolution had become so entirely master of the field. This means, of course, that each individual stood practically alone. His mental history was carried on within the limits of his own life. Hence Mr. Ward could discuss the problem of memory as belonging to an individual; he had not to take into consideration the influence of hereditary constitution. Since, however, the history of the race has been

taken into account in dealing with the individual, the question of memory has reached a new stage. May it not be argued that the mechanical registering of experience which has gone on through so many ages has resulted in starting man with an hereditary confidence in the world? The cases of hereditary instinct in creatures to which we do not ordinarily assign a consciousness of self will be quoted. And it will be argued that the memory of man is just a more complex case of something hardly to be generically distinguished from these cases of instinct; that, therefore, Mr. Ward's argument is not valid for man's memory, seeing that the difficulty upon which it insists has been covered by the previous history of the race. We think that this would have been a serious difficulty for Mr. Ward to meet, so long as he confined himself to his own statement of the case. He had used memory as an instance, and his instance is now in a measure explained away. But the same argument does not lie against the assertion of the principle involved in Ward's instance. Whatever may be the antecedent history of the mental processes of man, there emerges in the end a self-consciousness, operative in memory and in all other intellectual activities, which is necessary to the explanation of thought as we understand it. If this necessity can be made out, and we think it can be and has been made out, the answer from the idealist side is complete, both in regard of principle and in detail. A principle of philosophic interpretation has been produced which not merely explains the facts which the empiricists explained also, but is satisfactory where they fail.

Once more, the arguments used by Mr. Ward in connexion with the idea of Cause and the idea of God, seem to lack system and coherence. If we have understood him rightly, Mr. Ward regarded geometry and ethics, causation and the existence of a necessary Being as separate cases in which the necessity of intuition as a principle of knowledge could be proved. He does not show-partly, we may suppose, owing to the unfinished state of his work on this subject-the unity which runs through the whole system of thought. Such an omission as this does not matter much so long as details only are in question. While the object is to prove, as against Mill, that mere experience will not give a satisfactory basis for universal principles, this may be done by the citation of isolated instances. But when it becomes necessary to rise above instances, and to show that so much necessary truth implies a necessary Being, it is imperatively required that the whole range and character of the necessity should be

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displayed. And then it will be desirable to go much further. The existence of God, considered merely as a philosophical principle, is necessary to the validity, not only of necessary, but of contingent, truth. The final justification of all thought whatever lies in the assumption, if it may be so called, of the existence of God. Our whole right to interpret the world on our own principles, to read into it the laws of our own thought, depends upon our being able to regard the worlds of thought and thing as expressing the nature of the will, the reason of a necessary Being. If this conviction-call it assumption, or intuition, or what you will-if it fails, our knowledge fails as a whole; we have no guarantee of the validity of our experience; however little we may be inclined to it, however impossible it may be in practice, there is no philosophical barrier between us and scepticism-scepticism of a far more complete and exhaustive character than any that was professed by Mill. And, strictly speaking, it is not enough to prove the necessity of the existence of a first cause in order to protect the universality of the idea of causation. If necessity reigns only under the form of causation, and if beyond it pure contingency exists, then our universe is in the last resort governed by chance. It cannot be treated philosophically, except as a system; and the necessity of the existence of God, if it is to be adequately shown, must be made to appear as the demand of all forms of experience cumulatively considered. The various arguments for the existence of God are not so much separate processes of reasoning as the exposition under various heads of the final demands of experience under all its forms.

We think, then, that the deficiency in systematic completeness which we have noticed seriously impaired the value of Mr. Ward's arguments for Theism. We think also that his argument for Freedom suffers also from the want of a general determining principle. We have already noticed what seems to us to be a weakness in it, even from the point of view of an empirical philosopher. By a slight change of terminology we think that the empiricist could safely adopt Mr. Ward's anti-impulsive resolve. If, instead of describing the determining force as the 'balance of emotional craving and excitement,' they had called it the strongest motive,' we think that Mr. Ward's instance would have failed to prove them wrong. The error lies not so much in the description of given cases of conflict as in the empiricist's habit of treating the self as the mere passive scene of a conflict. Had Mr. Ward drawn out into the light of day the principle embedded

in his argument from memory, he would have made a much more decisive answer to the school of Mill. He would have been more successful even if he had confined himself to the position maintained by Aristotle, that whatever may be the source of the motives and impulses affecting a man, at least they are his, and he is responsible for their use. Moreover, as so often in controversies upon the subject of the will, there is no very clear account of the very point in dispute-viz., Freedom. What is it exactly that Mr. Ward affirms and Mill Mr. Ward was disposed to consider that a very large proportion of life, in some men by far the largest, was passed in obedience to what he termed the "spontaneous impulse of the will;" and that the opponents of Free Will gave, on the whole, a true account of the genesis of that impulse.' What he did maintain was the existence of a 'distinct originative force,' of which the determinist could give no account. But he nowhere, so far as we can find, explains how the two worked together; nor does he seem to realize that the characteristic of free action is that in it the self is realized, whether this self-realization is found in following the impulses of emotion or the counsels of reason.

It is, perhaps, a hard thing to try and estimate a philosophy from fragments. It must always be remembered that Mr. Ward wrote largely in the form of essays and articles appearing at considerable intervals of time, that the series he contemplated was never finished, and that the general character of his mind was such as to leave no logical possibility unconsidered, and no inference or consequence unforeseen. But with these reservations we must express our opinion that the work of Mr. Ward, brilliant as it is and effective as it was, is not sufficiently systematic or complete to stand upon its own merits as a philosophy. Every philosopher writes under the influence and in the terminology of his own age. The problems he discusses are those which his own age has brought before him, and which the men of his own age will understand. In this sense every man is of necessity the product of his period. But Mr. Ward is this in a sense which is not true of any of the philosophers of first rank. The questions he raises, the opinions he attacks, belong entirely to his own age; but he is controversial rather than constructive, and that means that his work is in danger of sharing the death of the systems which it destroys.

Mr. Wilfrid Ward must be congratulated on his success in reproducing so carefully and with such balanced judgment the various scenes in which his father lived. They are indeed

very various. From the Oxford life of sixty years ago to the academic life of St. Edmund's is one vast step. From the controversy over Infallibility to the Metaphysical Society and its discussions is another. And there are many things which, to the Anglican mind at any rate, are surprising in the last volume. It is curious to read a letter from Newman to Ward describing a miracle performed by the relics of St. Philip Neri. It is curious to find Wiseman promising Ward a relic of the saint after whom Ward's child is to be named, and asking in the same letter who the saint is; and perhaps still more curious to find Ward accepting a plenary indulgence once a month for himself and his family (p. 448). But these are the result of the great change from England to Rome; and, considering the magnitude of the change, we may be surprised to find that we are made to feel so completely at home with Mr. Ward-to see in him all through a type of a genial, highly educated, and deeply religious English gentle

man.

ART. V.-HERBERT SPENCER'S 'PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.'

The Principles of Ethics. By HERBERT SPENCER. Vol. I., Parts II. and III.; Vol. II., Parts V. and VI. (London, 1892-3.)

THE Data of Ethics, which occupies the first portion of the Principles, was reviewed in the Church Quarterly of January 1879 soon after its appearance; while the treatise on 'Justice," which fills 250 pages of the second volume, was similarly noticed in July 1892. But the completion of the work calls for a respectful welcome at our hands. It is the fulfilment of that portion of the author's immense undertaking which he has ever regarded as its chief object. He informs us in the Preface to Part I. that his first essay, published in 1842, vaguely indicated certain principles of right and wrong in politics. From that time forward,' he writes, 'my ultimate purpose, lying behind all proximate purposes, has been that of finding for the principles of right and wrong in conduct at large a scientific basis.'

The Christian moralist must needs sympathize deeply with so grand a design. What is called science excludes, in the view of many of its most famous representatives, the province of morals altogether; and the religious teacher,