(2) It tends to lessen the diffusion of a keen, intelligent, and reasoned apprehension of the doctrines and teachings which it is intended to protect. (3) It promotes hypocrisy and cowardice. (4) Religious freedom promotes the more and more reflex, self-conscious, and deliberate adherence to religion and morality, and consequently to the highest forms of the practice of both, and therefore to the highest good of which man is capable. Even these practical motives of expediency repose indirectly on moral perceptions and aspirations, and thus the cry for 'freedom' appeals both to the highest and most disinterested, as well as to the lower and more selfish, feelings of our nature.

An argumentum ad hominem, grounded on the alleged intolerance of the Church, or at least of its ministers, may perhaps be opposed to the views here put forward. But however much and however sadly persons in authority may have in fact oppressed individual consciences, however fiery or bloody may have been many persecutions which all right-minded men will ever deplore and execrate, the Christian Church none the less always officially defended the rights of conscience. However grossly such rights may have been trampled on in Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France, or England, the Church's executive never claimed jurisdiction over any but her own spiritual children-i.e. the baptised-and the Jews and others who were burned were burned in the mistaken conviction that they were necessarily acting in bad faith and against their consciences. It was due to mistakes as to matters of fact, not to a false principle as to conscience. Such mistakes were indeed lamentable, but need not surely surprise us when we recollect how in those days 'faith' was all but universal in Christendom-how all authorities, secular as well as religious, were its supporters, and had been so for centuries. It surely must have been difficult, in such circumstances, for churchmen who were themselves clearly persuaded of the certainty of their system to believe that individual dissenters were acting conscientiously, and this the more from the glaring moral obliquities which so often went with mediæval heresies. Those conscientious dissenters whose sincerity could be believed, had their rights of conscience respected by ecclesiastical authority, however brutal was their treatment by barbarous populations and by rapacious despots. The Jews were ever protected at Rome, meeting there with a shelter long denied them in almost the whole of Christendom besides.

To objections which may be raised by some Churchmen to principles advocated here and in the former paper 13 as tending to base religious authority on popular election, it may be replied that all theologians will admit that the highest certainty for the individual must be subjective certainty, and that in seeking to act rightly each man 1 See loc. cit. p. 507, where 'Church' and 'State' were treated as the outcome of the bipolarities of individuals.

must of necessity ultimately repose upon his own subjective moral judgment. When even he accepts the Church's teaching as infallible, and so submits his own persuasions to its behests, he can only do so because he thinks it probable or certain that it is right, and because he therefore judges that it is his duty so to submit, and elects its ministers as his guides.

No church can exist on earth save through the subjective convictions of individuals that it is the true religion, and all who believe in its truth virtually elect it, and it can exist only through such election. Any man who is converted to the Church, or who, having been educated a churchman, deliberately adheres to his religion as an adult, virtually elects the whole hierarchy of spiritual governors who govern the Church of his day, and in his region. Of course the Church, in the eyes of her children, extends beyond the limits of this world, and has a Divine invisible Head; but such considerations have no place in an argument which appeals to reason only, and in no way to revelation. In such a line of argument the Church must necessarily be treated but as an expression for the mass of individuals who agree in certain religious views and desires, and who have given themselves certain voluntary rules resulting in a definite organisation and spiritual government. To speak of the 'rights of the Church' means necessarily the rights of the individuals who compose it,' and an attack on the spiritual executive is an attack on the individuals who have actually or virtually chosen that executive as their own.

How manifest a violation of just liberty is the intrusion of the civil governor into the spiritual domain is made clear by the concrete example we have in Germany now. The May Falk laws of Prussia, in fact, deny to individuals the right to group and associate themselves in voluntary associations for spiritual ends, to select from their fellows those to whom they will confide the education of their children, or to obey the dictates of their conscience by acts which are innocent of all encroachment on the similar rights of others. For to deny the right of an episcopally nominated priest to officiate in a parish, the parishioners of which desire him, is to infringe not so much his rights as the rights of election of those who, by calling themselves Catholics, show that they have delegated that power to their bishop, and have virtually elected as their minister the man appointed by such bishop. To exile or imprison such bishop is to outrage the rights of a number yet greater-namely, the rights of all those who, by calling themselves Catholics, show that they, in fact, voluntarily elect as the man they will have as their episcopal superintendent the one indicated to them by the supreme Pontiff.14

This antiquated tyranny-antiquated from the advanced standpoint of the English- and Dutch-speaking people-is, thank God,

• See Contemporary Evolution (H. S. King & Co., 1876), p. 85.

now certainly on the wane.15 At the recent Congress of Berlin religious equality was supported by all, even-inconsistent as it may be-by persecuting Russia. The relaxation of civil authority over religious acts will, it may be confidently hoped, in spite of occasional retrogressions, gradually spread over the less civilised part of Europe as savagery abates, and reciprocal reverence and consideration become more common between men who differ as to their religious views.

What is desirable for the stability of governments and for the happiness of subjects is that each legislature and executive should recognise its own incompetence to dictate practices and impose religious beliefs upon their subjects. No individuals or their representatives can rationally pretend to override the serious conscientious convictions of their fellows. The absurdly arrogant pretension so to do was the bane of the first French Revolution, and is the bane of the liberalism of Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland now.

The true end of social as well as of individual life, the promotion of goodwill, must certainly, however slowly, bring about due tolerance, and a just equilibrium, however much the pendulum may be first made to oscillate by the less moral and intelligent of the two sections (conservative and progressive) which divide civilised communities. But the welfare of the nation can no more than the welfare of self be the ultimate boundary of our desires and efforts. Our conscience plainly tells us that we should, as far as we can, labour for the benefit of the whole human family, the members of which are all alike 'persons,' all possessed of an ineffable dignity, all capable of acts comparable with nothing but the activity of the Creator, capable of bringing forth fruits compared with which the most beautiful or awful of merely physical phenomena sink into relative insignificance capable, that is, of moral actions-capable of virtue, which, we before saw, all human life and even all known organic life has for the final object of its being.

Thus it seems that the application of ethical principles to the phenomena of social existence, as known to us through history and observation, tends to the conciliation of the well-meaning of both the sections of mankind just referred to. Too many men in each section unhappily misunderstand the real objects and desires of numbers of the other section.

On the one hand we have men devoted to morality and to its essence religion, opposing 'progress' and hating its watchwords as necessarily hostile to all they revere.

On the other hand we have men devoted to morality in the form

15 It is remarkable that the German-speaking people should be in this so much behind the Dutch. Thus Professor Haeckel of Jena, in the preface to his biological romance entitled The Evolution of Man (recently translated into English), actually says: We do indeed now enjoy the unusual pleasure of seeing "most Christian bishops' and Jesuits exiled and imprisoned.'

of philanthropy, opposing religion and its ministers as enemies of civilisation and progress.

Round each party are gathered men united with it from lower motives. Round the party of progress,' indeed, howl the energumenes of license and disorder such as have lately shown themselves in their true colours at Marseilles. But their vices and follies must not blind us to the good intentions of those to whom they cling, and of whom they hope to make use, any more than religious men should suffer for the faults of the superstitious—that is, of believers it may be, but believers deficient in love for God as well as for their fellow-men.

If there is any value, any truth, in the considerations put forward in these papers, it would seem that an analysis of the watchwords which have found such widespread acceptance, shows that union may be effected and social peace concluded between all men who recognise that the one end of life is duty, and this without any repudiation of cherished expressions. It is surely preferable to retain these expressions (on account of the good things they really signify), rather than abandon them to the misuse of those who deceitfully avail themselves of the favourable connotations such expressions convey, the better to disguise the tyrannical nature of their real aims.16

6

Thus the ideals of modern Liberalism, freedom' (especially 'freedom of conscience'), a political 'social contract,' as also 'equality' and 'fraternity,' all find their true realisation in the recognition of 'duty' as the aim of life, and may be adopted without scruple by patriotic Conservatism. In the idea of duty' is found their true realisation, while the delusions which have seduced men to the worship of false idols in their place, stand revealed through such conception as if touched by the spear of Ithuriel. The idols which have been set up for the true God have been freedom for the passions,' the envious levelling of superiority,' the abolition of reverence 'the abolition of reverence for man's essence (his moral responsibility), the abolition of reverence for the world, and the abolition of reverence for God. These idols overthrown, in their place stand disclosed the true objects of esteem. These are the various forms of activity in pursuit of physical, emotional, intellectual, and, above all, moral good, which arise from the conscientious pursuit in things great and small, alike by individuals and by States, of duty as the one aim of life. It is this conception which intensifies, beautifies, and transfigures human life, and it is this which alone gives to it dignity and significance.

ST. GEORGE MIVART.

16 While these sheets are going to press, M. Jules Ferry has inaugurated a fresh Radical tyranny by proposing a law which is to deprive French parents of the liberty of continuing to educate their children as they have hitherto chosen to educate them.

IS A GREAT SCHOOL OF ART POSSIBLE IN THE PRESENT DAY?

IN Plato's Phædrus Socrates says: 'The soul, which has seen most of truth, shall come to the birth as a philosopher, or artist, or musician, or lover; that which has seen truth in the second degree shall be a righteous king, or warrior, or lord; the soul which is of the third class shall be a politician, or economist, or trader; the fourth shall be a lover of gymnastic toils, or a physician; the fifth a prophet or hierophant; to the sixth a poet or imitator will be appropriate; to the seventh the life of an artisan or husbandman; to the eighth that of a sophist or demagogue; to the ninth that of a tyrant;-all these are states of probation, in which he who lives righteously improves, and he who lives unrighteously deteriorates, his lot." "George Eliot makes Cosimo say in Romola, 'Va! Your human talk and doings are a tame jest; the only passionate life is in form and colour.'

We may or we may not agree with Socrates in putting the artist in the first rank, or with Cosimo's view of the place art takes in life; but it is as well to know on what a very high level wise minds have placed the artistic nature before we consider the present or future possible condition of art.

Somehow the art we see in our annual exhibitions hardly, as a rule, enforces to our minds the truth of the wisdom of Socrates. His opinion of the highest worth of the artist soul is not brought vividly before us in looking round the Royal Academy walls, or even if we select solely the works by the heads of that institution. The souls of the Royal Academicians may have come to the birth having seen most of truth,' but their work does not often suggest any very superior insight into the essence of things; nor can the modern artist be said, as a rule, 'to forget earthly interests and be wrapt in the divine, so that the vulgar deem him mad and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired.' Nor should we think, judging from his work, that to the successful artist of our time human talk and doings appear tame jests' by reason of the fulness and passion of his life in form and colour.

Yet how much of the world is occupied in art, how much expert

Jowett's translation, vol. i.