me that Butler, or any of those who opposed Hobbes, did present the question to themselves with equal clearness. Their business had been with men; their interest was in men. Nature, as apart from men, they had considered very little. They had observed (it was strictly an observation, not a theory or a dogma), that men had social tendencies, that they were not merely the self-regarding animals that Hobbes affirmed them to be. But when they said, "These social qualities belong as much as the self-regarding qualities to their Nature," they fell, I conceive, into some perplexity, which became very obvious and startling indeed when they went on to affirm that there was in this Nature a controlling or magisterial power over its own operations. That a Conscience is implied in the exercises of every human being, I think they showed very clearly; when they affirmed that it was part of the Nature of every human being, the facts and the logic of Hobbes, it seems to me, were irresistible against them.

At this point we may pass to the adjective "Natural." The contrast between Natural and Artificial is, no doubt, strongly present to those who speak of a Moral Nature. Artificial Manners seem to them essentially bad manners; Artificial Morality is immoral. What is spontaneous, they say to themselves, must be better than what is forced. The same feeling is traceable in the old Greek discussion about Puois and Nóuos. That which was the result of decree or convention could not have the same worth as that which sprang from some inward root. The Natural man is used by Coleridge in his "Dejection to denote that in Man which is in sympathy with Nature. He says that by abstruse research he had, for a time at least, destroyed this in himself; that he could see, not feel, how beautiful the earth was. He would, I suppose, being at that time probably a disciple of Hartley, have said that the wires of the human instrument had ceased to vibrate in harmony with those in the outer world. He deduces from his own experience the maxim that,

"In our light alone doth Nature live,

Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud."

A peculiar sense is often given to the phrase natural man by theologians, but as oxikós is the word in St. Paul on which it is grounded, I have no excuse for touching upon it. There are other applications of the adjective which deserve examination. Natural Philosophy has a simple enough meaning; no one doubts that it means a philosophy about Nature, distinguished from a philosophy about Morals, or Metaphysics. Natural Religion has a much less definite signification, or rather has two or three quite distinct and scarcely compatible significations. It may mean a religion which is deduced from an observation of the external world or is found in the external world. It may mean

a religion arrived at by certain faculties in man, which are called Natural. It may mean that which a man finds in himself and is a law to himself. These meanings run strangely into each other; even earnest and thoughtful writers often make little effort to separate them.

Whilst there is so much vagueness in our use of the simple epithet, it is not wonderful that there should be frequent fighting about the compound. Some assume that the supernatural is the irregular, the unusual, the disorderly. But we have seen that the poet of Nature found it impossible to express the coherency and harmony which he discerned in Nature, without referring it in some sense or other to a goddess who governed it. His desire for a Law of Nature was a desire to find something over Nature which was constant and unchangeable. Any one who says that the Nature of Man of necessity bows to certain motives confesses those motives to be supernatural powers. So far there is great agreement between Epicureans and Stoics, between the disciples of Hobbes and those who acknowledge a conscience. The real questions between us are, What is the Supernatural Power which we recognise? If Nature is associated with Humanity, in what way is it associated? If there is a Law over it, has that Law any connection with the Law which is over man? Is the Law which is over man a Motive which holds him in bondage, or does it proceed from a Will that seeks to set him free?

F. D. MAURICE.

THE EDUCATION DIFFICULTY.

IT surely is time that the attention of those who are arraying themselves against Mr. Forster's Education Act of 1870 should be recalled to the serious consideration of the interests of the million of children whom two or three years' postponement of the work of carrying out its principles into practice will rob of that fair start in life which the Act admits to be their due.

The difficulties which are blocking up the way are mainly what are called "religious" difficulties, and as far as those so prominently urged by Nonconformists are concerned, they are practically the same religious difficulties which prevented an Education Act being passed twenty years ago.

Twenty years ago (January 22, 1851), Mr. Cobden moved the following resolution at a large meeting at Manchester, held by the "National Public School Association":—

"That the present aspect of the educational question gives high testimony to the value of the efforts of this Association, and promises a complete and speedy triumph.'

In his speech on that occasion, Mr. Cobden advocated what he called a system of secular* common schools, and he thus explained why he did so :-—

* But it was a "secular" system which did not exclude the Bible. "I never will be a party to any scheme that attempts to lay down in an Act of Parliament this mon VOL. XIX.

U

"I have really passed the time in which I can offer any opposition to any scheme whatever, come from whatever party it may, which proposes to give the mass of the people of this country a better education than they now receive. I will say more that in joining the secular system of education, I have not taken up the plan from any original love for a system of education which separates itself from religion.

"I confess that for fifteen years my efforts in education, and my hopes of success in establishing a system of national education, have always been associated with the idea of coupling the education of this country with the religious communities which exist. But I have found, after trying it as I think in every possible shape, such insuperable difficulties in consequence of the religious discordances of the country, that I have taken refuge in this, which has been called the remote haven of refuge for the Educationists the secular system-in sheer despair of carrying out any system in connection with religion. I should, therefore, be a hypocrite if I were to say I have any particular repugnance to a system of education coupled with religious instruction."

What Mr. Cobden advocated in 1851 was very nearly the same system as that which those Nonconformists who have joined the League are urging now. But Nonconformists were Mr. Cobden's most determined opponents then. He complained of their attitude in the following words :

"Well, I must say we have endeavoured to be very accommodating to these gentlemen, and have found it very difficult to please them. When the attempt was, for many years, to have an education combined with religion, then these same gentlemen told us that it was contrary to their consciences either to receive or to pay money raised by taxation for teaching religion. When we offer to separate it, we are told by these same gentlemen that it is contrary to their conscientious convictions to separate religious from secular teaching."

In another speech at Manchester in December of the same year, Mr. Cobden again complained of the attitude of the Dissenters, who were, as a body, opposing national education altogether :—

"There's no doubt but that it (i.e., public education) is determined on by the great mass of the community, and however any body, in sincerity, which is so involved in this question as the dissenting body is, can be moving about the country and trying to advocate or plead for that impossible cause no public education at all-passes my comprehension."

And then, alluding to the religious difficulties in the way of the great national object, he continued:

"I believe that the great mass of the people take less interest in this sectarian squabbling than many others of us are apt to imagine. The great mass of the people want education for their children; they are sick to death of these obstacles you throw in their way. I believe, when our extended franchise throws more power into the hands of the multitude, you will see that what I say is true, that there is a feeling for national education strous, arrogant, and dictatorial doctrine, that a parish or community shall not, if it please, introduce the Bible into its schools."-(Speeches, ii. 599.)

which will sweep away all the cobwebs with which you attempt to blind the great mass of the people, and feeling this, and having done my best to do justice to all parties in the matter, I say now emphatically-'I vote for education: I'll do the best I can for Dissenters, but I'll never oppose a system of education which promises to give to the mass of the people an opportunity of raising themselves in life and benefiting their children, by having a share in its advantages which those alone above them have hitherto enjoyed.""

After twenty years' delay, involving the robbing of millions of English citizens of their fair start in life, and not until household suffrage had been conceded to the people, at length, in 1870, an Education Act was demanded and passed. And yet now, in 1872, it becomes needful again to ask seriously whether religious difficulties, about which the masses of the people do not probably care more than they did, are to be allowed to step in between their children and the education they so much need?

There are practical difficulties in the way of national compulsory education of quite another kind, affecting deeply the interests of the working classes, of the million and a half of children in the existing schools, and, above all, of the million children who are in no school at all. And I am firmly convinced that not until the whole question comes to be regarded from a more practical point of view, not until we are willing to go on with the work of removing these practical difficulties, will the English system of education be made national in the view of the masses of the people, and in the interests of their children. At the same time, I am equally firmly convinced that the moment the nation feels that the system is to be made national in this more general and more practical sense, there will arise a national feeling, such as Mr. Cobden spoke of, in favour of national compulsory education, based upon the common-sense view of it a faith in its practical realisation and the blessings it will bring with it which will enable the Education Minister who shall succeed in realising for the nation its own better mind to remove every legitimate religious difficulty in a way in which it would not be possible to remove it now.

It has occurred to me that some advantage might arise from a calm and impartial attempt to point out how, by carrying out the principles of Mr. Forster's Act to their legitimate results, the English system of education may be made truly national and compulsory, regard being had mainly to the interests of the masses of the people and the needs of their children; and how in making it so, the religious difficulties which grow chiefly out of the sectarian feelings of the middle and upper classes may probably be made to vanish. The principles of Mr. Forster's Act I take to be these:

* "Mr. Cobden's Speeches," ii. 603; Dec. 1, 1851.