an honored steward in the Methodist Episcopal Church in southern Mexico. When Maximilian, desiring to attach to his cause the heads of influential tribes, summoned this chieftain to the capital for a conference the old man returned the answer that when he went to salute his emperor it would be to a Mexican, not an alien. Which we would call rather fine, considering that Maximilian was then in undisputed power.

Whether or not this fair sister republic, which scarcely two generations ago (before the adjustments of 1847) possessed the greatest undeveloped empire on earth, is predestined to absorption by the United States of America, there is abundant reason in humanity, in national policy, and in self-interest why we should know her better. There the tourist may find novelty, antiquity, mystery, and romance unequaled elsewhere in the world; the health seeker a climate to heal most earthly ills; the young man of commercial or industrial ambition a broad and inviting field; and the archæologist the richest treasure that the earth has yet to give up.

Archer Brown

ART. V.-HERBERT SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF

RELIGION.

AMONG all the articles called forth by the death of Herbert Spencer few deal specifically with his attempted philosophy of religion. Yet, if religion sums up, as it does, a man's ultimate attitude toward the universe and life, it is in his religious philosophy, in his views of the origin, nature, function of religion, that the real drift and natural outcome of his thinking may be most clearly seen. Moreover, in the hands of Herbert Spencer the empirical philosophy of religion has reached its most elaborate and ingenious form, if not its most perfect one. It is not intended to present here for detailed criticism his doctrine of the Unknowable as the common ground upon which religion and science can meet in peace; an Unknowable of which we can be certain only that it is, without knowing anything as to what it is. The claims which Spencer makes for the religious value of this Unknowable are without the shadow of a foundation. The universal religious peace it promises is a delusion and a snare. A peace gained by sinking all the differences between the various creeds in the one universal confession of the utterly inscrutable mystery is only the peace of the graveyard, where both religion and science lie buried together.

Certainly no one will deny that in religion there is deep unfathomable mystery. That man cannot find out the Almighty unto perfection has been the confession of devout souls in every age. "Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour," exclaimed Isaiah. Says Hooker, "Of thee our fittest eloquence is silence, while we confess without confessing that thy glory is unsearchable and beyond our reach." To those who would have all things clearly seen through by the dim eyes of man what reverent thinker would not feel like saying with Carlyle: "Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; wilt walk through the world by the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, or even by the hand lamp of what I call Attorney-Logic; and 'explain' all, 'account' for all, or believe nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt attempt

laughter. Whoso recognizes the unfathomable, all-pervading domain of Mystery, which is everywhere under our feet and among our hands; to whom the universe is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle-stall-he shall be a delirious mystic; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy hand lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it"? But to say that because we cannot know God unto perfection we cannot know him at all is to say that since we are not omniscient we can know nothing. It is true that just because he is the light of all our seeing he can never be completely seen. "Let finite intelligence stand at its furthest and highest peak of progress in intellectual and spiritual knowledge, and it will still discern, stretching away before it, the dim regions of the unknown, peak above peak, range beyond range, lifting their heads into the clouds of mystery, impenetrable heights and unfathomable depths of that Being before whom the befitting attitude of created mind must forever be that of holy wonder and humble reverence." But can one really worship a Being who is all mystery-mystery absolutely inscrutable? The only appropriate, yea, the only possible, feeling toward such a Being would be a dumb, blind wonder of ignorance, the paralysis of thought in presence of a portentous yet insoluble enigma, a dull, stolid submission, a crouching, groveling terror before the supernatural. Never could it be intelligent admiration, humble reverence, aspiration, trusting obedience, much less joyous sympathy and love. As Professor Bowne says, "A God who must always remain for thought and conscience has no more religious value than a centaur or a sea serpent." Again, "Out of this blank abyss of total darkness, neutral alike to good and evil, no inspiration can come. Religion cannot live on nescience, and reverence is impossible toward a blank. . . . In the God who commands our reverence and our loving worship there must be mystery and there must be manifestation."

It is in his maturest work upon religion, The Principles of Sociology, that Spencer gives an exhaustive exposition of what he conceives to have been the origin of religious ideas and observances. He does this with his usual wealth of happy illustration, which, however, almost overwhelms and devours the argument. To

examine the theories here advanced in the light of his ontology and psychology would carry us too far afield and be too wearisome and unprofitable a task. We can simply indicate the broad outlines of Spencer's religious theory and the lines of criticism. He begins by reconstructing, in a manner perfectly familiar nowadays, primitive man and his conditions. The external factors are described, and we see early man stand forth within his environment. But unfortunately this primitive man was manufactured in the brain of Mr. Spencer. He is just as modern as his maker. That he ever really existed outside the heads of such thinkers as Spencer is exceedingly doubtful. But this hypothetical primitive man in the course of his pilgrimage into a higher state has some striking experiences. From the difference between motionless natural objects, on the one hand, and moving animals, on the other, he grasps the distinction of animate and inanimate, knows himself to be a living being. But he is a living creature who sleeps. In his sleep he dreams. The dream is interpreted as a real experience. He explains it by supposing that he has a shadow or double. "He floats through space like a swan on sweet St. Mary's Lake or he floats double." This motion is confirmed by such phenomena as swooning, epilepsy, and especially the state induced by a heavy savage supper. He comes at length to imagine that the dead are only asleep, or swooning, or dreaming, as he does after a feast, and that their doubles are alive somewhere, sooner or later to return. Thus is developed the idea of a soul. The dead man returns not simply as a ghost, but also to reanimate the body. On this belief are founded all customs of preparing food for the dead and other related rites practiced by savages. This leads to sacrifice. The tomb grows into the temple, and the custom of placing food on the burial mound gives rise to the altar. In strange human visitors coming from distant parts the ghosts of unknown dead men were seen, and in nature all manifestations of power were ascribed to ghostly agents. Ancestral ghosts are beneficent ones, able in council or in war to aid their pious sons. Thus the ghosts became gods. From the partial control which one personal agent may acquire over another among men arose the belief in divination, sorcery, etc. Out of praises and prayers to the dead arose all the

modern forms of religious worship. Thus the fear of ghosts was the real root of ancestor worship and, indeed, of all religion. The poverty of his speech forces the savage to name his kindred after animals, and since the ghosts are believed sometimes to enter animals these causes combined occasion the person to be identified with the animal. Hence arises animal worship. Plant and nature worship have a similar origin. Idolatry resulted from the preservation of skulls and other bones and the manufacture of images of these relics when for any reason they were missing. Great men arise, and as extraordinary beings are deified. Thus using the term "ancestor worship" in its broadest sense, as including all worship of the dead, we reach the conclusion that it was the real root of every religion. All our gods are transformed ancestors. The spring of all religion is the primitive savage's ignorant and ignoble fear of ghosts. Civilization, as it advances, gradually frees man from one form of superstition after another, until at last we reach the highest phase of monotheism. This is at length in its turn left behind. The Christian God is dethroned, and in his place is proclaimed the Unknowable.

This, then, is in substance the explanation given by this worldfamous thinker of the mightiest moral power in history. Were it not for the great name of its author it would hardly merit serious refutation. It is a theory, not of religion, but of superstition. Well does Pressensé say: "A dream taken for a reality, a ghost story, a craven fear, this is all! The sublimity of devotion, the cheerful endurance of martyrdom, the pouring out of the treasures of charity at the feet of suffering humanity, the sacred yearning of the soul after the infinite, the deep thoughts of such men as Augustine and Pascal, the rapture of the soul upborne above all transitory things, aspiration after the ideal, heart sorrow for sin, tears that will not be dried, the craving for pardon and for righteousness -all these, we are told, are the result of the wild dream of a savage with brain bewildered by a hunting feast. Thus, all that is grandest, most thrilling in history is to be traced back to the vapors of a morbid brain. The disproportion between the fact to be explained and the explanation is self-evident." It makes the perfect love of God nothing better than most complete self-stultifica