thought of the time, and as suggesting rather than as closing inquiry on the subjects considered.

Mr. Mallock's position is, in brief, this. Under the influence of the positive thought of the age (using the word positive not especially in the Comtean sense, but as meaning sceptical, scientific thought), God and immortality have become dreams, man an automaton, life has lost its beauty and dignity; the only way to restore these to existence, is to accept Catholicism, and find rest in the bosom of an infallible church.

The position of Mr. Mallock's opponent is directly the reverse. Catholicism is the deadly foe of science and all progress; the true value of life is to be found in positivism, its principles and the activities it inspires.

The following is an abstract of Is Life Worth Living. Modern scepticism is sweeping in its denials, as never before. It rejects Christianity, which focalizes the supernatural as did none of the religions of antiquity. Science has reduced the world to comparative insignificance, hence revelation becomes improbable, and man and his destinies of little account. The thought of the age is intensely self-conscious, and destructive in its analysis. If life is worth living, there is a prize to be gained, and this must be moral in its nature. When we ask positive thought what this prize is, it replies, either individual or social happiness, and it continually confuses the two. If it says, social happiness, sociology becomes the basis of morality, as indeed the advocates of positivism are constantly affirming. But social happiness is an indefinite end, and the benevolence and sympathy upon which the positivists rely for its realization, are inadequate. If it says, individual happiness, goodness becomes its own reward, and this is impossible, because positive thought eliminates the importance, inwardness, and absolute authority of the moral standard. If positivists affirm that love remains and will prove constantly ennobling, the reply is, scepticism degrades love, and leaves us no choice between its lower and higher forms. Positivism, too, destroys that supernatural moral judgment, which reverses our natural estimates of the relative worth of things. It makes folly of great literary creations, as Hamlet, Antigone, Faust, etc., which are founded on this judgment, and introduces a general ennui and monotony

into life and letters. Moreover no superstition was ever greater than that of positivism. It denies influence to the heaven and hell of theology, and then expects men will be attracted by its vague optimism, and its future earthly paradise. Scepticism might not, indeed, plunge the world into wild excesses of sin, but it blunts the conscience, makes it powerless in the presence of an overwhelming temptation, reduces the world to insipidity, -and this process, moreover, has already commenced. The boasted inexorable logic of positive thinkers is also a fiction, for when they come to the phenomenon of consciousness, for example, they deny the evident spiritual power producing this, and indulge in vague generalities about the insoluble mystery of the production of thought through molecular changes. They reject, too, the manifest miraculous power of the will, reducing everything to a gross materialism. There are difficulties, to be sure, in theism, as the existence of sin and free will, but these are not peculiar to theism. Admitting this, and the demoralizing effect of scepticism, the question arises, is there any form of religion which can restore to life the significance and beauty of which the positive school robs it. The reply is, Catholicism is such a form of religion. It is the infallible church, guided by the spirit of God. Protestantism leads to rationalism, and modern criticism has made impossible the Biblical infallibility on which it rests. Catholicism has boundless charity, its doctrines are unfolded with the unfolding spiritual sense of humanity, it is adapted to the wants of the age. There may be perplexities, but if one has grace to say, I believe, although I never can comprehend, he may enter the sacred enclosure of the true church and find life recreated.

The line of thought pursued in the "Reply," is substantially as follows. Mr. Mallock's qualifications for the work he has undertaken are first considered. He is an entertaining, but unfair writer. He quotes from Tyndall, George Eliot, Huxley, Théophile Gautier, but not from Comte, Spencer, Hæckel, Littré or Lewes. He has the Jesuitical characteristics, contempt for truth, an attitude of habitual warfare, a morbid sensitiveness to sexual sins, persecuting tendencies. The picture he has drawn, at a distance looks finished, but closer inspection reveals many flaws in the enamel. He is a thinker, but his smart sayings,

flippancy, drawing-room brilliancy of epigram, suggest whether he is adequate to the task he has essayed. His book is constructed with art, but his effort to restore Catholicism is as much of an anachronism as the effort of the emperor Julian to restore paganism. Positivism does not start, as charged, with the two great denials of God and a future life, but with the affirmation that we are to seek truth in the realities of existence, by means of the senses and consciousness. It knows only the phenomena, not the substance of matter, and it rules out the metaphysical conceptions of God and the soul as unthinkable. The positivist conception of society is much more ennobling than represented, and includes nutrition, reproduction, function, all of which the English essayist ignores. Positive thought retains responsibility, though it affirms the mystery is rather in individuality, than in the will as a self-determining entity. The doctrine that we must believe in certain mysteries because we cannot explain certain other mysteries, is emphatically irrational and dangerous. Positivism does not unify the spiritual and material, but it denies any supernatural influence producing consciousness. The idea of the miraculous power of the will is a fiction. Positive thought does not reject the inwardness or importance of the moral law, but only its absolute character, nor does it confound morality with happiness. It intends to oppose Catholicism at every step, and supplant the priests with the philosophers. Its ideals are noble, and the failure to realize them is to be traced to the ignorance and folly of mankind. But the age is new, and already glimpses can be had of the purified, beautiful society, made possible through the positive conceptions of humanity.

Now to briefly compare the two books-we see not how the candid thinker can fail to sympathize with Mr. Mallock in his main position, that the general effect of the sceptical thought of the age, must be, to make life less happy, and of less worth. But it by no means follows that every one must be miserable and degraded, who is a partial, or even a pronounced sceptic. To certain speculative, melancholy spirits, of whom the English writer is a good example, it might seem as if life had nothing left worth living for, if God and immortality were denied. The masses, sufficiently animal even with theism and a future

life at least formally accepted, would be undoubtedly plunged into, no one can tell, how much deeper selfishness and sensualism, if a belief in these were destroyed. But between these extremes a class of healthy, energetic minds, of whom the author of The Value of Life is apparently one, would remain, who might still find in the conditions and activities of earthly existence, an opportunity for a very noble development and noble life; and this, too, may be admitted, at the same time strongly maintaining the ennobling influence of theism on the finest character and culture. While, therefore, Mr. Mallock's general position remains intact, he has undoubtedly carried his argument too far. He has undervalued positivism, and used some fallacious reasonings in support of theism. Many of his arguments against the former, might be applied with quite as much force against any disinterested virtue at all, and this, as he can hardly be unaware, many theists are as anxious to uphold, as any positivists can be. On the other hand, his opponent has, in certain respects, underestimated and misrepresented theism, and he has so far pressed his argument for positivism, as to represent it as well nigh all-sufficient for the welfare of the individual and the race. And yet he has done good service in indicating wherein the real value of positive thought consists, and in detecting many of Mr. Mallock's sophistries. And here let it be said, that there are certain things which make a comparison between the two books difficult. For example, the "Reply" is founded chiefly on Comtism, while the author of Is Life Worth Living directs his argument largely against Professor Huxley, who repudiates Comtism. Catholicism finds an ardent supporter in the English speculator, though he evidently possesses no sympathy for the Catholic organization of positivism. The author of The Value of Life, on the contrary, has at least a kindly feeling for the latter, while he bitterly opposes the former. Then also the matter is further complicated, because the last named writer with the merciful charity of the latest utterances of scientific negation, does not deny God and immortality, but simply rules them out of thought as unknowable. Mr. Mallock, on the other hand, does not use a direct argument in support of theism, but only says, if it is denied, such and such deplorable results follow.

The points at issue between the two are mainly theseCatholicism-the nature and sanctions of morality-the constitution of society, and what will be its fate without religion -the nature of mind and will. The author of the "Reply" employs his main strength on the last two of these subjects, treated of in the chapters of Is Life Worth Living, entitled Sociology as the Foundation of Morality, and the Logic of Scientific Negation. These are, in outline, Mr. Mallock's views on the first of these subjects. General good according Sociology furnishes us

to the positivists, is general happiness. merely the "negative conditions" not the "positive materials" of happiness. "Band-work with the same perfection may be practiced for opposite ends." Morality must rest on the proved facts of sociology, "but it rests upon them as a statue rests upon its pedestal, and the same pedestal will support an Athenè or a Priapus." "The social happiness of all of us means nothing but the personal happiness of each one of us." "The feelings of sympathy and benevolence on which the positivists rely (i. e. for the advancement of society), will be found, on consideration, to be altogether inadequate." Now in regard to this matter, what the author of the "Reply" seems to have done, is this. He has convicted Mr. Mallock of presenting a very inadequate view of what the science of sociology is. His own account of it is much more exhaustive, occupying nearly a third of his volume, while the subject is disposed of in one short chapter of Is Life Worth Living. To be sure, the latter was not intended as a treatise on sociology, but in the comparatively hurried description given, Mr. Mallock has laid himself open to the charge of ignoring many of the characteristics of society, as physical and moral well-being, occupation, knowledge, sympathy, reproduction, function, all of which are elaborately considered in the "Reply." Then he is shown to be not quite fair in charging upon the positive school the confounding of morality with happiness. And although he is undoubtedly correct in claiming that there can be no happy society unless it is composed of happy individuals, he has not given enough prominence to labor for the good of society, as constituting one very important element of that happiness. But his charge that the masses of men will be but vaguely