instruct in many of the facts and processes of nature, using those facts in a way to suggest various valuable moral lessons. The Talks tell the story of how the world came to be, and how the soil was made, and what sort of workmen God employed to crush the rocks into soil and pulverize it and plow it and get it ready to bring forth crops of all kinds. They tell of seeds and how they are scattered and planted by winds and birds and squirrels and rabbits; of the wonders of growth, its power and its conditions; of harvest, enforcing the lesson that we will reap what we sow; of frost and snow and the beauty of snow-crystals and the use of snow and glaciers and icebergs; of clouds and fogs and vapors and rain; and of quaint Easter customs, with the meaning of Easter. All these wonders of Nature, described in terms intelligible to children, are made to fix spiritual lessons in young minds. The simple picture-illustrations serve to make the Talks still plainer. Dr. Jordan believes with Horace Bushnell that it is our privilege and duty, as preachers of Christ, to do more preaching to children. For years he has practiced on this conviction with eminent success. In this little book he presents some of the pulpit talks which have made his ministry attractive and edifying to the young. The progress of child-study in our day renders it probable that we shall have an increase of this sort of preaching in the near future. To have no children in our pews is wrong. To have them there, but understanding nothing of what the preacher says, is not ideal. To make them like to be there is a triumph. Often the children listen to us with the feeling expressed by a seven-year-old girl who went across the street one morning to look at an Annual Conference which was in session in her church. She soon returned home, explaining to her mother, "They all talked great big grown-up things, so I comed away." That little girl is now a missionary in India.

The Illustrative Lesson Notes for 1904. By Thomas B. Neely, D.D., LL.D., assisted by Robert R. Doherty, Ph.D., and Rev. Henry H. Meyer, A.M. 8vo. New York: Eaton & Mains. Cincinnati: Jennings & Pye. Price, cloth, $1.25.

In

In the preparation of this standard annual unusual care has been taken. For a quarter of a century the "Illustrative Notes" have enriched the libraries of Sunday school workers with their treasures of knowledge. While no amount of aid can render less imperative the necessity of studying God's word "without note or comment," yet such helps as this volume affords are of inestimable value to the most diligent students of the Scriptures. The treasures of the standard commentaries, exegetical, homiletical, and practical, in condensed form are here presented. addition thereto hundreds of maps, pictorial illustrations, and blackboard diagrams render the exposition of the lessons by both teachers and reviewers at once easy and interesting. The volume is indispensable not only to teachers, but likewise to advanced students of the word in Bible classes. Privileged indeed are these workers, since concerning them it may be affirmed, "Other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors."

METHODIST REVIEW.

JULY, 1904.

ART. I.-MR. SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY.

My purpose is to make a critical exposition of the fundamental ideas and logic of Mr. Spencer's system; as they are what determine his place and importance in the history of philosophy.

The naturalistic revival of the generation just past was an interesting and instructive episode in the history of thought. The multitudinous facts discovered and the great physical and biological generalizations to which they led found us mentally unprepared for dealing with them. We had no adequate philosophical and critical apparatus, and the result was a storm. The fountains of the great deep were broken up, and some things passed away with a great noise. Of this naturalistic movement Mr. Spencer became the official philosopher for the English-speaking world, and to a great extent elsewhere. In the enthusiastic and uncritical state of thought then prevalent Mr. Spencer's philosophy acquired something of the prestige of physical science itself, and was supposed to rest on an equally solid foundation, but this has largely passed away. Philosophical criticism has set in. There has been a more careful partition of territory between science and philosophy, and the postulates of naturalism have been subjected to searching examination. The result has been a clearing of the air and a readjustment of philosophical estimates. In consequence Mr. Spencer's reputation as a philosopher has notably fallen off. Even his disciples now tend to find his greatness less in his positive contributions than in the stimulus he gave to thought. How much of this stimulus was due to Mr. Spencer

himself and how much to the condition of the intellectual world we do not decide. At all events, the fashion has changed, and Mr. Spencer is no longer a great name in philosophy. When we look at his fundamental ideas we find them in the highest degree unclear. When we look at the logic of his system we find it full of inconsistency. When we look at his leading generalizations we find them vague and unfruitful. The doctrine of the unknowable with which Mr. Spencer introduces his system has long been recognized as weak and inconsistent. The discussion is superficial at best, and the results are largely ignored or contradicted in Mr. Spencer's doctrine of science. Hence thirty years ago prominent disciples, like Mr. Youmans, began to proclaim that it really was no part of the system, and in a postscript to the last edition of First Principles Mr. Spencer himself points out that the scientific exposition is quite independent of his doctrine of the unknowable. This, as we shall see, is not strictly true, but it is interesting as a recognition that all is not well with the logic of the system.

In the discussion of the unknowable Mr. Spencer examines the ideas of first cause, absolute, infinite, space, time, matter, motion, force, and conscious mind, and finds them all unthinkable and contradictory. Thus theology, physics, mathematics, and psychology are made impossible at a stroke. Mr. Spencer is well content, as we all know, to leave theology in this outcast condition, but physics he proceeds to rescue in order to make a foundation for science. This he must do or abandon science as well as theology. All the more must we scrutinize the process and make sure of our goings. Mr. Spencer was neither a materialist nor an atheist in intention. The charge of materialism he repudiated with warmth, and as for atheism he held that the choice is not between personality and mechanism, as the atheist would claim, but between personality and something that may be higher. Nevertheless evolution is defined in terms of matter and motion, and the formula is held to include all the phenomena of life, mind, and society. Now, it is plain that if matter and motion are to be taken in the usual sense this is pure materialism and smacks pretty strongly of atheism. Mr. Spencer meets such suggestions by pointing out that matter and motion are only symbols of the

inscrutable power behind phenomena. There is then a double problem for Mr. Spencer. First, he must rescue science from the skeptical conclusions of his agnostic argument, and, secondly, he must set forth a doctrine of phenomena and phenomenal knowledge which will at once make a foundation for science and also save his system from lapsing into vulgar materialism and atheism. In both respects Mr. Spencer's success is very meager.

On the first point Mr. Spencer's method is to recall the notions of space, time, matter, motion, and force which were cashiered and discredited before, and reinstate them as the corner stones of science. He says, "That skeptical state of mind which the criticisms of Philosophy usually produce is, in great measure, caused by the misinterpretation of words." In consequence "there results more or less of that dreamlike illusion which is so incongruous with our instinctive convictions." This sense of illusion. Mr. Spencer proceeds to dispel by a better definition of real and reality. The peasant, he says, makes appearance and reality one and the same thing. But "the metaphysician, while his words imply belief in a reality, sees that consciousness cannot embrace it, but only the appearance of it; and so he transfers the appearance into consciousness and leaves the reality outside. This reality, left outside, he continues to think of much in the same way that the peasant thinks of the appearance. The realness ascribed to it is constantly spoken of as though it were known apart from all acts of consciousness." For the peasant there is nothing but the real thing, and that is outside. For the metaphysician there is a distinction between the thing and the appearance, the thing being outside and the appearance inside. Hence illusions arise when the peasant and the metaphysician get together. The remedy for this is a new definition of reality: "By reality we mean persistence in consciousness. . . . The real, as we conceive it, is distinguished solely by the test of persistence; for by this test we separate it from what we call the unreal. How truly persistence is what we mean by reality is shown in the fact that, when after criticism has proved that the real as presented in perception is not the objectively real, the vague consciousness which we retain of the objectively real is of something which per

sists absolutely, under all changes of mode, form, or appearance. And the fact that we cannot form even an indefinite notion of the absolutely real except as the absolutely persistent implies that persistence is our ultimate test of the real." These quotations are taken from chapter iii of the sixth edition of the First Principles. It can hardly be said that they will do much to remove "that skeptical state of mind," or "that dreamlike illusion," "which the criticisms of philosophy usually produce." The metaphysician is rebuked for leaving the reality outside, as the peasant does; whereas "by reality we mean persistence in consciousness," in which case everything is inside. But in the next sentence persistence in consciousness is shortened into persistence, and we are left in further uncertainty whether persistence is the meaning or the mark of reality. Yet as a result of these and similar considerations Mr. Spencer concludes: "Thus, then, we may resume, with entire confidence, those realistic conceptions which Philosophy at first sight seems to dissipate." Thus space, time, matter, motion, and force are restored to us as "relative realities." They stand in indissoluble relation with their absolute cause, and for us are equally real. We may therefore build up our science upon them with all confidence, only referring now and then, for form's sake, to the absolute reality, lest we forget.

Now the friendliest critic could not fail to see that for all this we have little more than Mr. Spencer's assurance. We are merely told that they are relative realities, and that we may safely build upon them. But when we insist on walking by sight rather than faith we find this doctrine in the highest degree obscure even in its meaning. This brings us to the second point mentioned, Mr. Spencer's doctrine of phenomena, their place and nature.

What and where are these relative realities? What is their relation to us and to the unconditioned reality? On this point Mr. Spencer is very unclear. Indeed, except in the vaguest way, he does not seem to have thought of it at all. At times the relative realities seem to be only effects in us, as in the following: "If, under certain conditions furnished by our constitutions, some Power of which the nature is beyond conception always produces a certain mode of consciousness-if this mode of consciousness is