things whose principles are unknown, or which have an arbitrary value; hence, to exercise other faculties than those concerned in this process, it is necessary that some subjects should be taught by the method of rigid logical thinking. What the subjects are, so that they naturally admit of the method, does not much matter, as the intellectual discipline is in all cases worth more than the acquired facts. It is sometimes assumed that an industrial democracy is unfavourable to the development of ideal faculties and the cultivation of art—that its tendencies are exclusively towards the useful and the profitable. This may be the case, but it fortunately happens that the connection between use and beauty is not accidental, but essential; and if individual liberty of development is secured, there will always be a reaction against the conventional standard of the loom or the shop. The seeds of æsthetics have been sown in England, and if sufficient freedom of motion is secured for individuals, a crop of national good taste is sure to spring up. As soon as we have one generation fairly educated, the progress will be more rapid, and the demand for noble streets, fine public buildings, and museums and galleries-especially open on Sunday-will insure a prompt supply. Our towns and cities are for the most part exhi

bitions of an ugliness, which consists in the absence of good taste rather than the presence of bad; and it is gratifying to note indications of the revival of a national architecture adapted to the modes of construction and wants of the day, which will protect us against cold desolate imitations of Roman, or mongrel Greek.

The foundations of education must be laid in the private life of a people, but its public life is only second in importance; and the more multifarious and numerous the public duties that are discharged by the people for themselves, the higher will be their average culture. Milton exclaims, "I call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and of war.' This is what we wish to realize, but it cannot come from any scheme of educating people for their "stations:" under a rational condition of society any station ought to be open to free competition, and to be cultivated up to the possible station of a man is to include all the cultivation of which his nature is susceptible. When the worth of education is rightly valued, the educator will take his true position-the demand will not be for an instrument to cram, but

for a man or a woman to train; and as the personal influence rises in estimation, the remuneration, whether from public or private sources, will be raised to a point that will induce appropriate aptitude to undertake the task.

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CHAPTER XIV.

RELIGION AND MORALS IN RELATION TO SOCIAL

CONDITIONS.

RELIGION is an eternal principle linked with transitory forms, and although the same propositions appear to be believed from age to age, so long as religious bodies profess to embalm their convictions in the same formulæ of words, the real opinions of mankind differ according to the state of society in which they live. When a set of dogmas and practices have become concreted into a system, it will endure so long as it is in harmony with the prevailing movements of the time; but the very fact that it is a system places it in antagonism to the new-born forces that are destined to rule the

future when the present has passed away. In primitive periods, religion and science were united-were, in fact, diverse manifestations of the same truth; but under the influence of priesthoods, religion became crystallized into definite unyielding forms, which, not being able to contain the dis

coveries of science, were compelled to suffer its growth beyond their narrow boundaries. The emancipation of science, by dividing the functions of the philosopher from those of the priest, marked a great step in human progress, and another step was made when morality, not being well treated by the clergy, took refuge with the scientific expounders of nature's laws, and soon, like science, won an existence independent of theological technicalities. By degrees though always lagging behind, and arguing whenever he could with the dungeon or the stake— the theologian found himself obliged to admit the truths he could not suppress, and to accept mora] principles which his own system would never have produced. As a result of these processes the world has now three distinct proposals before it, two of which are the remains of former systems. The first is to found science upon theology, the second to found theology upon science, and the third is to weave religious feeling with the scientific method; to employ that method as far as it can be made to work, and then to gratify aspirations that no difficulties can quell, by permitting the intuitive, imaginative, and sympathetic faculties to carry man to regions which the boldest experiments and the subtlest logic must fail to reach.

It is probable that a controversy will always be