justifiable, to expel by force a body of | been to a good Jesuit school he will adhere religionists or irreligionists from a country, to the Jesuit system in later life. That or, permitting them to stay, to subject them will depend on what they teach him. If to all kinds of petty persecutions and dis- they put on the ecclesiastical screw too abilities, we say at once, the former. It strongly, the chances are they will make a rests at least on a principle. It expels rebel of him. M. Renan was not a semonly those who are supposed to be under- inarist for nothing. Hardly any of the mining the well-being of the community. assailants of the Catholic Church are so It is, in effect, a great public act of accu- formidable as those who were the chosen sation. And as soon as the public con- servants of the Catholic Church. The science no longer endorses that accusation, greater number of French parents who the policy must be reversed. Not so with send their sons to Jesuit schools, do so the system of disabilities and petty perse- from no affection for the Jesuits, but becutions. It is not equally conspicuous, cause they find the schools good, and are and therefore its injustice may be much not afraid of their children going any furlonger concealed from public view. More- ther than they themselves wish. The over, it is a policy which has far less to panic of the anti-Catholic party about Cathsay for itself. If the State does not know olic education is at once cowardly and enough of any order or sect to know that weak. Catholic education will be effective it is dangerous to the public welfare, it in proportion as it is really adapted to humust be either without grounds against it, man nature, and in proportion as the nonor at least in considerable doubt about it; Catholic education fails to be so. Nothing and in either case, to prohibit it from try will be more likely to stimulate Catholic ing its chances with authorized rivals, is teaching than this poor and unworthy athardly defensible. It implies far more tempt to gag it. If the Republicans want knowledge than any public body can have to control the too great influence of the of a religious or irreligious order, to say of Catholic Church, their course is clear. it," You may leaven the adult community Let them do justice strictly between the with your teaching, if you can, but you Church and those who reject her, and preshall not teach the children even of those vent anything like persecution on her part. whose parents you have convinced." That Let them take the best means in their is a fineness of discrimination which we power to compel all educational bodies, say, without doubt, no legislature, com religious or secular, to teach secular knowlposed as legislatures are, and judging by edge in the soundest way. Let them give the sort of criteria on which they are com- all such teachers a fair field, and no favor. pelled to judge, ever yet attained. Let them trust to parents to select their Hence we believe that the French Re- children's teachers, from the natural desire publicans will have entered definitely on of parents for their children's best interthe evil course of a policy of persecution, ests. But let them not return persecution if they pass the seventh clause of M. Jules for persecution; let them not try to pubFerry's bill. This is an age in which all lish a sort of Index Expurgatorius of religious principles and all irreligious prin- persons who are not to be trusted with the ciples are being tested afresh, and there is young, or they will be soon told that with no less, perhaps more danger, of the latter out the excuse of devout belief, they are being insidiously conveyed in the process borrowing from the Church her most obof education, than the former. If the Re-jectionable methods and her most deadly publicans do not wish to invite attacks on the propagandist secularism and atheism of the present day, they should not initiate attacks on the propagandist dogmatism of a former day. Have they no confidence in the natural progress of principles of liberty and serious investigation? If the Jesuits gain pupils, as it is said they gain then, by attending far better to their pupils' physical health, recreation, and character than the masters of the ordinary lycées, why they deserve their success; and the parents are quite right, so far, to prefer schools in which the children are so much better looked after. Moreover, it is childish to suppose that because a boy has

weapons. That the French Republicans
have not yet learnt to be tolerant towards
those who profess principles of intolerance,
we are not surprised to see. But that they
are prepared to be actively intolerant to-
wards those who, if not even as tolerant
as their neighbors, are yet not distinctly
distinguishable from them, that they are
not even prepared to make tolerance the
rule and intolerance the exception,
do learn, at once with surprise and the
deepest regret. Here is the great danger
of the Republicans, and it seems to be
a danger which they are bent on making
imminent.

-we

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From The Nineteenth Century.

nor held by believers alone. Voltaire has PROBABILITY AS THE GUIDE OF CONDUCT. used nearly the same words:

BY W. E. GLADSTONE.

THE doctrine of Bishop Butler, in the introduction to his " Analogy," with regard to probable evidence, lies at the root of his entire argument; for by the analogy which he seeks to establish between natural religion and that which is revealed, he does not pretend to supply a demonstrative proof of Christianity, but only such a kind and such an amount of presumptions in its favor as to bind human beings at the least to take its claims into their serious consideration. This, he urges, they must do, provided only they mean to act with regard to it upon those principles, which, in all other matters, are regarded as the principles of common sense. It is therefore essential to his purpose to show what are the obligations which, as inferred from the universal practice of men, probable or presumptive evidence may entail.

But indeed the subject-matter of this introduction has yet a far wider scope. It embraces the rule of just proceeding, not only in regard to the examination of the pretensions of Christianity, but also in regard to the whole conduct of life. The former question, great as it is, has no practical existence for the vast majority, whether of the Christian world, or of the world beyond the precinct of the Christian profession. It is only relevant and material (except as an exercise of sound philosophy) to three descriptions of persons; those whom the gospel for the first time solicits; those who have fallen away from it; and those who are in doubt concerning its foundation. Again, there are portions of these classes, to whose states of mind other modes of address may be more suitable. But every Christian, and indeed every man owning any kind of moral obligation, who may once enter upon any speculation concerning the grounds which lead men to act, or to refrain from acting, is concerned in the highest degree with the subject that Bishop Butler has opened incidentally for the sake of its relation to his own immediate purpose.

The proposition of Bishop Butler, that probability is the guide of life, is not one invented for the purposes of his argument,

Presque toute la vie humaine roule sur des

probabilités. Tout ce qui n'est pas démontré aux yeux, ou reconnu pour vrai par les parties évidemment intéressées à le nier, n'est tout au plus que probable. L'incertitude étant presque toujours le partage de l'homme, vous vous détermineriez très-rarement, si vous attendiez une démonstration. Cependant il faut prendre un parti: et il ne faut pas le prendre au hasard. Il est donc nécessaire à notre nature faible, aveugle, toujours sujette à l'erreur, d'étudier les probabilités avec autant de soin, que nous apprenons l'arithmétique et la géométrie.

Voltaire wrote this passage in an essay, not on religion, but on judicial inquiries : * and the statement of principle which it propounds is perhaps on that account even the more valuable.

If we consider subjectively the reasons, upon which our judgments rest, and the motives of our practical intentions, it may in strictness be said that absolutely in no case have we more than probable evidence to proceed upon; since there is always room for the entrance of error in that last operation of the percipient faculties of men, by which the objective becomes subjective; an operation antecedent, of necessity, not only to action or decision upon acting, but to the stage at which the perception becomes what is sometimes called a "state of consciousness." †

But, setting aside this consideration, and speaking only of what is objectively presented as it is in itself, a very small portion indeed of the subject-matter of practice is or can be of a demonstrative, or necessary, character.

Moral action is conversant

almost wholly with probable evidence. So that a right understanding of the proper modes of dealing with it is the foundation of all ethical studies. Without this, it must either be dry and barren dogmatism, or else a mass of floating quicksands. Duty may indeed be done, without having been studied in the abstract; but, if it is to be studied, it must be studied under its true laws and conditions as a science.

:

Now, probability is the nearly universal | dishonesty to any doctrine, which should form or condition, under which these laws give a warrant to acts of moral choice upon are applied and therefore a sound view evidence admitted to be less than certain. of it is not indeed ethical knowledge itself, Their disposition is deserving of respect, but is the organon, by means of which it when it takes its rise from that simple unis to be rightly handled. He who by his suspecting confidence in the strength and writings both teaches and inures men to clearness of truth, which habitual obedithe methods of handling probable or im- ence engenders. It is less so when we perfect evidence, gives them exercise, and see in it a timidity of mind, which shrinks by exercise strength, in the most important from measuring the whole extent of the of all those rules of daily life which are charge that it has pleased God to lay upon connected with the intellectual habits. us as moral agents, and will not tread, even in the path of duty, upon any ground that yields beneath the pressure of the foot. The desire for certainty, in this form, enervates and unmans the character. Persons so affected can scarcely either search for duties to be done, or accept them when offered, and almost forced upon their notice. As a speculative system, this tendency has appeared among some casuists of the Church of Rome, and has been condemned by Pope Innocent XI.

Different forms of error concerning probable evidence have produced in some cases moral laxity, in others scrupulosity, in others unbelief.

To begin with the last named of these. It is a common form of fallacy to suppose that imperfect evidence cannot be the foundation of an obligation to religious belief, inasmuch as belief, although in its infancy it may fall short of intellectual conviction, tends towards that character in its growth and attains it when mature. Sometimes, indeed, it is assumed by the controversialist, that belief, if genuine, is essentially absolute. And it is taken to be a violation of the laws of the human mind that proofs which do not exclude doubt should be held to warrant a persuasion which does or may exclude it. Indeed, the celebrated argument of Hume, against the credibility of the miracles, involved the latent assumption that we have a right to claim demonstrative evidence for every proposition which demands our From this assumption it proceeds to deny a demonstrative character to any proofs, except those supplied by our own experience. And the answer, which Paley has made to it, rests upon the proposition that the testimony adduced is such as, according to the common judgment and practice of men, it is rational to believe, while he passes by without notice the question of its title to the rank of speculative certainty.

assent.

The position of many among her divines with reference to the danger of moral laxity opens much graver questions. The "Provincial Letters" of Pascal gave an universal notoriety to the doctrine of probabilism. Setting apart the extremes to which it has been carried by individuals, we may safely take the representation of it, as it is supplied in a manual published for the use of the French clergy of the present day. According to this work, it is allowable, in matters of moral conduct, that if of two opposite opinions, each one be sustained not by a slight but a solid probability, and if the probability of the one be admittedly more solid than that of the other, we may follow our natural liberty of choice by acting upon the less probable. This doctrine, we are informed, had been taught, before 1667, by one hundred and fifty-nine authors of the Roman Church, and by multitudes since that date. it appears to stand in the most formal contradiction to the sentiments of Bishop Next, with regard to the danger of Butler, who lays it down without hesitation scrupulosity. This has perhaps been less that the lowest presumption, if not neuconspicuous in philosophical systems, than tralized by a similar presumption on the in its effect on the practical conduct of life opposite side, and the smallest real and by individuals. There are persons, cer- clear excess of presumption on the one tainly not among the well-trained and well-side over the presumptions on the other informed, who would attach a suspicion of side, determines the reason in matters of