with one identical proposition he bridges it over with another as we saw a moment ago, and takes possession of the material universe on the ground that our sensations are effects of causes; in no wise disturbed by a suspicion that propositions which destroy each other cannot be identified. Nor was he at all embarrassed by his new possession. Perhaps the last man in Europe to have invented a theory of the material universe for himself he had nothing to do but cross the channel again and appropriate Newton's. It was, to be sure, a prodigious blunder for an old Cartesian to make. The Plenum would have exactly suited him, as it suits Mr. Lewes, while the Newtonian Physics with its indestructible atoms and antagonistic forces turned the principle of certitude into palpable nonsense. However, Condillac went to work gallantly and reproduced the Principia in eleven chapters of identical propositions, thus completely disposing of the universe as an ingenious variation upon the sublime theme, The same is the same. "All of which, he concludes, you will be convinced of, Monseigneur, if you only take notice that we have been mounting from discovery to discovery by simply passing from one identical proposition to another."* What would His Highness have said could he have lived to see the bewildering universe discovered by Mr. Lewes at the end of the same passage?

Comment upon Condillac's system of things can hardly be called for to-day. He was using a principle which he believed himself to have discovered and whose sufficiency he was quite sure of, so that he had none of the beneficial restraints of criticism and no caution of his own to check him. His absurdities therefore were a matter of course and are not very instructive for us, who have the benefit of Mr. Lewes's corrections. They serve, however, to bring out clearly one important truth which we should have supposed it was the religion of Empiricism never to forget, namely: that any subjective criterion of truth whatsoever must be ready to submit to the facts of experience, inasmuch as the discovery of the facts is the very thing we want a criterion for. Thus the principle of identity, if such a criterion exist at all, will carry a man just so far as the inexpugnable differences of phemomena permit him to go, and not

* L'Art de Raisonner, p. 203.

one step farther. To identify our sensations is the most vicious and futile realization of abstractions possible if the realities corresponding to the sensations are not themselves identical. Condillac saw clearly enough the barriers in his way and for the most part respected them He distinguished with as much precision as anybody between sensations and the substance of mind, motions and the substance of matter, and between the two substances themselves. But he could not quite suppress the hope that the barriers would disappear in a larger knowledge; that behind the obtrusive contrasts of the Universe a fundamental identity awaited a more searching application of the principle of certitude. We have shown, he says in the Art de Penser, how sensations become successively attention, memory, comparison, judgment, reflection; how simple ideas become complex, sensible, intellectual and others; all by a series of identical propositions which taken together amount simply to this, that sensations are sensations. "If in all other sciences we could equally follow the generation of ideas and sieze everywhere the true system of things, we should see one truth give birth to all the others; and we should find the abridged ex pression of our entire knowledge in this one proposition: The same is the same."* Nothing therefore obstructs the Identical Philosophy but the seeming diversity of nature, and the temptation to get this diversity out of the way will be exactly proportioned to the exigencies of the philosopher; if they are very great the inclination will be strong upon him to say that if the facts won't fit the system-tant pis for the facts. Now, since Condillac's time, when there were plenty of alternatives to choose from, the situation has very seriously altered for the worse, and Mr. Lewes if no other thinker of his school-is perfectly aware of it. He has seen the empirical systems of Mr. Mill and Mr. Spencer falling to pieces from the strains of their own gravitation; he knows that the only asylum left for Empiricism is the Identical Philosophy. So the irresistible temptation we spoke of has come upon him,-to cast out the obstinate facts for the

* L'Art de Penser, p. 121. Compare this from the Art de Raisonner: Si nous pouvions découvrir toutes les vérités possibles et nous en assurer d'une maniere evidente, nous ferions une suite de propositions identiques, égales à la suite des vérités; et par conséquent nous verrions toutes les vérités se reduire à une seule. p. 293.

sake of harmony among the remainder. Sit pro ratione voluntas. If there be anywhere in Nature a thing that will not consent to identification with all other things, let it be anathema. There are unfortunately some very considerable things that will not so consent, and the triumphs of Mr. Lewes's philosophy are the prompt suppression of them. He excommunicates the substance of the soul, the substance of matter, and the Almighty along with them the floating phenomena of Feeling and of Motion which survive he identifies as subjective and objective aspects of one another. To all this the most fitting rejoinder is that Mr. Lewes's exigencies are not ours and that we really must be excused for declining to take his voluntas as our ratio.

ARTICLE IV.-THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES.

NOTHING has come down to us from classic antiquity more full of interest than the Mysteries of Ceres. They were the most wide-spread, the most dignified, and continued the longest of all the secret orders which have ever existed. Compared with the time these Mysteries flourished, Free Masonry, which boasts so ancient an origin, is but a child in years.. For the latter, despite its lofty pretensions, can trace its history with certainty but two or three centuries at most; while Eleusinia has an undoubted record of more than a thousand years. And if we compare the extent to which the power of this Institution prevailed, and the number of cultivated men who identified themselves with it, no other secret order can claim an approach to its importance. For the strong hold which these Mysteries so long maintained among those nations which swayed the world, and the secrecy which concealed their doctrines, constitute most powerful factors in the education of humanity.

It must be admitted that mystery has a strong fascination for elevated souls. But when Revelation makes the relations between man and his Creator a matter of definite knowledge, there is no need of mystic orders. Nay rather, divine truth, which is the heritage of all God's intelligent creatures alike, is opposed to secrecy. But the case is different among the heathen. For if there was no secret receptacle for doctrines, where they may be kept pure by the combined effort of superior minds, they would quickly be lost amid the prevailing corruption. The mission of Eleusinia was to constitute such a receptacle. For thus the truths of Revelation, committed to the chosen people, and reflected from them by tradition, were kept alive among their Gentile neighbors until the appointed time, when the gospel reaffirmed and made them clear to all men.

The depth to which human nature sinks when left to itself is measured, both in its descent and return, by the objects worshipped. True religion consists in the act of communion between the Spirit of God and the spirit of man directly, without any intervention of image or symbol. For those who worship

Him aright must do this in spirit and in truth. The opposite extreme is the worship of devils, under revolting forms and with abominable rites of blood and uncleanness. For the conscience is active to accuse and alarm among the lowest of mankind as well as the highest; but it can think of a god no higher than its own moral level, and so creates a divinity of wholly depraved attributes. The supreme spiritual power is thus conceived of as diabolical, possessed of a constant desire to harm; and must therefore be propitiated, not so much to obtain favor as to avert injury. This we find to be the condition of men in all parts of the world when they are farthest removed from the knowledge of the true God; and accordingly, devil-worship constitutes the lowest depth of human degradation.

The first grade in the rising scale is pure Nature-worship, where all the powers and objects of the material world are personified and endowed with life. Here everything is double, the one over against the other. The material and visible are at first worshipped as the god himself, which is properly pantheism. But by degrees the personality is separated from its manifestation, and then the divinity is thought to reside in the visible object while making it the organ of his manifestation. This was the condition of Greece during nearly all the heroic age, and also the historical period, until, through intercourse with Phoenicia and Egypt, the ideas of a purer spiritual religion began to permeate and leaven the modes of thought. In the very earliest conceptions of the heroic age, we discern the remaining traces of devil-worship in the shocking vices ascribed to the gods; such as theft to Mercury, lasciviousness to Jupiter and Venus, and drunkenness to Bacchus. The same is also visible in the rites by which the deities were worshipped, as in the Bacchanalian orgies, when women became so frenzied that they ate raw flesh, and mothers, like Agave, tore their children to pieces. But this period belongs to a condition of human nature too low to leave much account of itself, and when records began to mirror the life of the Hellenes, this kind of worship had nearly passed away; while in its place a more refined and rational spirit prevailed.

The foregoing introductory observations are intended to explain the conditions under which the Eleusinian Mysteries arose,