wrong; on any alternative, therefore, philosophize we must." So said Aristotle of philosophy; and the mode of reasoning is equally applicable to skepticism. In the one case, as in the other, the principles are determined by that inherent tendency in the human mind which impels us ever in the pursuit of knowledge, and which in rendering philosophy a necessity gives also a similar position to that skeptical tendency or attitude of doubt without which philosophy would be impossible.

Or, again, as Lessing has beautifully expressed it: "Did the Almighty, holding, in his right hand, Truth, and, in his left, Search after Truth, deign to proffer me the one I might prefer, in all humility, but without hesitation, I should request Search after Truth." In the world of mind, as in in the world of matter, there can be no life where there are no energizing and active influences at work. We exist as men only as we think as men. In this connection, surely no one will deny that the power to think implies the right to doubt; in fact, that besides their being in the strictest sense correlated, the existence of the one is inconceivable without the existence of the other. In other words, the normal state of development being that of process and change, skepticism is to civilization what the forces of action and reaction are to the material world. In either case, the object is the preservation of an equilibrium, the perpetuity of certain principles upon which all life, physical and psychical, depends, and, finally, the preclusion of that stagnant condition from which the mind instinctively recoils. Or, again, to reduce the whole subject to a simile which is by no means inapplicable: Life to Endymion was no better than death. Without skepticism, and the spirit of intellectual activity which it

engenders, society would be no better than the youthful Endymion lost in a perpetual sleep. Or, in the last place, to say with Hamlet:

"What is a man,

If his chief good and market of his time

Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and god-like reason

To fust in us unus'd."

It is true that, in following this principle to its logical consequences, we will in many instances find ourselves reduced to a condition of intellectual nakedness; but even this is better than the most superb and costly dress of error. Learn what is true in order to do what is right; this is the aim and purpose of the wise man. It is the last analysis of reason, and the dictate also of common-sense. It is the result of incessant thought and severe intellectual discipline. It is, in short, according to Goethe, "the active skepticism whose whole aim is to conquer itself;" and not that other spurious sort whose characteristics are flippancy and conceit, and whose aim, consisting in a desire merely to perpetuate itself without any regard to the ultimate goal of truth, ought only to be deplored, and not encouraged.

Says the founder of the Cartesian philosophy, after describing the gradual process of his negative criticism, and under a due appreciatiou of the difference between a genuine and a spurious skepticism: "For all that, I did not imitate the skeptics, who doubt only for doubt's sake, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole intention was to arrive at certainty, and

to dig away the drift and the sand until I reached the rock or the clay beneath."

Philosophically considered, it seems, therefore, almost like a truism to assert that skepticism is a condition of progress; and that in its action there is a positive as well. as a negative side to be considered.

So long as we recognize the existence and supremacy of mind, skepticism is not only a condition, it is also a necessity. Rational, philosophical doubt, however, is one thing; irrational, superficial doubt quite another.

"Sands form the mountain, moments make the year."

So said Young in his appreciation of the stupendous works of time, and the principle is equally applicable to the process of our intellectual growth; a principle of gradual accumulation, which, it will be easily seen, makes skepticism indispensable as a condition of progress, while it also gives an additional emphasis to the Italian proverb, "He who knows nothing doubts of nothing." Skepticism and curiosity are the great springs of knowledge.

In conclusion, therefore, the spirit of the age being a spirit of inquiry, we are not for this reason warranted in supposing, as some would have us believe, that it is the result of a feverish excitement, an unnatural and delirious condition. On the contrary, it is the returning glory of that intellectual empire whose power and beauty having temporarily departed with the decline of Grecian culture, reappears on the horizon, giving us promise of a brighter day; while it also indicates an enlarged and growing appreciation of that truth so beautifully and so powerfully expressed by Sophocles in his Antigone:

Reason, my father, by the gods is given
To men, the noblest treasure we can boast."

ANCIENT FAITH AND MODERN CULTURE.

ADMITTING, as we must, if we are candid with ourselves, that, in many respects, the prevalent idea of education is scarcely in advance of that spirit of sophistry which Socrates so forcibly and effectually denounced, it cannot, at the same time, be denied that there exists also a large class whose sentiments decidedly favor a revival of the Socratic spirit, at least so far as its search after principles is concerned; a disposition, in fact, which, because it is so deeply imbued with the elements of rationalism, necessarily separates many of the deepest and most earnest thinkers of the present day from those earlier forms of faith so heartily venerated by their cotemporaries, and, to a certain extent, inseparable from the spiritual life of our ancestors. Or, to express the same subject in another form: The modern mind has become deeply impressed with the idea that the world moves intellectually, as well as physically, and that, as a consequence of this motion, it is not only incumbent on us to cultivate in an individual sense the spirit of restlessness and intellectual discipline alluded to in the preceding chapter, but also to embody it in a general or universal sense under the form of Culture. On the one hand "there is the church, with its ecclesiastical usages;

its Sunday school for the children; its devotional meetings in the week, and its Sunday teaching and worshipall acknowledged as good for those who like them, and are willing to accept what people thought or believed was true a hundred years ago." On the other, there is this rationalistic and progressive spirit to which we have referred; and whose influences, however much they may be misunderstood or underestimated now, are, nevertheless, destined to make a forcible and lasting impression on the civilization of the future. Resting as it does on the basis of a scientific interpretation of human nature, and rebelling against that commonly received theological estimate whereby an intelligent progress of culture is supplanted by a miraculous transformation of grace, it not only repudiates the idea of progress through the assistance of ecclesiastical nostrums, crutches and ambulances, but also insists upon a general recognition of natural laws, in place of miraculous interpositions and special dispensations of grace; which are, after all, nothing but the outgrowth of our intense egotism and ignorance.

True it may be, as Mr. Tylor has remarked in his admirable work on "Primitive Culture," that "the world at large is scarcely prepared to accept the general study of human life as a branch of natural science, and to carry out in a large sense the poet's injunction to 'account for moral as for natural things.' Certainly, to the "world at large," this is the case; and is likely to be for some time to come. If, however, we are prepared to enter more fully into an examination of what the "world at large" really means, we shall most certainly discover that this dissentient spirit is largely, if not entirely, due to the existence of a certain amount of mental imbecility, rendering possible a belief in causeless freaks, chance,