of most universal and abiding interest; and it is not easy to overrate the value of Oriental studies generally, and of these Sacred Books in particular, towards a better apprehension of some of the deepest of these problems. 'Ex Oriente lux' we may truly say in this connexion. The discovery-we may so call it-of Sanskrit was the starting-point of the science of philology by the application of the comparative method. The discovery of the great religions, whose authoritative documents are enshrined in the Sanskrit tongue, and in the other ancient tongues of the East, has been the starting-point of the science of religion. In this domain, too, it is now discerned, the comparative method is the key to that new knowledge which is gradually, but most surely, supplanting the ancient conjectures. Here, too, the scientific spirit has penetrated-the spirit of accurate investigation and rigid deduction; the spirit embodied in the maxim, 'Neque ridere, neque flere, nec detestari, sed intelligere.' But on this subject we must let Max Müller speak, for no one speaks with greater authority :

'The historical study of language soon led to a genealogical classification of the principal languages of the world, in which Hebrew received at last its right place by the side of other Semitic dialects; while the question of the origin of language assumed an altogether new form, viz., what is the origin of roots and radical concepts in every one of the great families of human speech? By following the example of the science of language, the students of the science of religion have arrived at very similar results. Instead of approaching the religions of the world with the preconceived idea that they are either corruptions of the Jewish religion, or descended, in common with the Jewish religion, from some perfect primeval revelation, they have seen that it is their duty first to collect all the evidence of the early history of religious thought that is still accessible in the sacred books of the world, or in the mythology, customs, and even in the languages of various races. Afterwards they have undertaken a genealogical classification of all the materials that have hitherto been collected, and they have then only approached the question of the origin of religion in a new spirit by trying to find out how the roots of the various religions, the radical concepts which form their foundation, and, before all, the concept of the infinite, could have been developed, taking for granted

nothing but sensuous perception on one side, and the world by which we are surrounded on the other.'*

Now of this science of religion it is not too much to regard Max Müller as the founder. The greatest of Indian rulers, indeed, the Emperor Akbar, did, perhaps, dimly discern its possibility. At all events he apprehended the cardinal truth that in the investigation of religions the comparative method should be followed. But the time was not then ripe for pursuing it. Professor Hardy was well warranted when he said, in his inaugural address to the University of Freiburg (1887), that 'the general comparative science of religion (die allgemeine vergleichende Wissenschaft) dates from Max Müller's great undertaking -the translation of the "Sacred Books."

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An Englishman is nothing if not practical; and we may be asked, What are the achievements of this new science? Here, only three can be touched upon, and that in scantiest outline. In the first place, it has thrown a flood of light upon the real origin of religion, and has made an end of the dream-and-ghost hypothesis which we are called upon by Mr Herbert Spencer to receive and believe under pain, so to speak, of intellectual reprobation. That hypothesis is a perfectly baseless figment, doctrinaire in the worst sense of the word. Historical investigation is fatal to it. No one who is not theory-blind-a very common form of blindness-can study the documents brought before us in the Sacred Books' without finding overwhelming evidence that a very different origin must be assigned to religion. It is perfectly clear that the religious sentiment in man was first awakened by the great objects of nature, especially the sun; that its root is in the feeling after, and of, the Infinite. 'Awakened' we say: it was there in the human heart, like other sentiments and emotions which are part and parcel of our nature, which are common to all mankind. For, as Waitz truly observes in his Anthropologie der Naturvölker,' there is no specific difference between men in respect of their spiritual life' (in Rücksicht ihres geistigen Lebens). The dreamand-ghost theory, founded on the doubtful beliefs of savage tribes, is opposed to the lessons derivable from

* Lectures on the 'Origin and Growth of Religion,' p. 262. Vol. 195.--No. 390.

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the religions of the great families of the earth, as history reveals them.

Secondly, as the science of religion throws a flood of light upon the origin of religions, so also does it enable us accurately to apprehend their growth. Religions produce dogmas naturally, just as trees produce flowers and fruits. Religion exists indeed in the state of emotion, sentiment, vital instinct, before it translates itself into rational notions, and into ritual which is the outward visible sign of those notions. But such translation is bound to come. Dogmas are to religion what words are to thought. And they are not dead things. They have a life of their own. They develope by a silent and irresistible growth, occulto velut arbor ævo.' Their evolution is rendered necessary by the laws of history. Like words, they are living organisms, and are in continual transformation. It is not that any truth which they symbolise changes. No, it is that our apprehension of that truth changes. There are two elements in a dogma, one mystical and practical, the other intellectual and theoretic, and these elements are bound up together, not artificially, but naturally and organically. Again, a dogma is like an algebraic formula which represents ideally a given quantity, but is not that quantity itself. The intellectual experience is the symbolic expression of the religious experience, nothing more. It is no new thing which we are now writing. St Augustine, St Athanasius, St Thomas Aquinas, Butler, Newman-to name no others-lay it down that theology is an economy, that is to say, a parable, or exhibition of the truth in symbols. We shall do well to remember this. It has a most important bearing upon a multitude of religious questions often discussed with equal literalism by those who affirm and by those who deny. Now-for this is our present point-the 'Sacred Books' offer invaluable help for studying the growth of religion.

Finally, the science of religion has made-or should have made an end of what we may call the sectarian view of religion, the view tersely expressed by Mr Thwackum in Fielding's inimitable novel. When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.' Perhaps the latest work of any considerable pre

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tensions written from this point of view-a valuable work it is in many respects-is the late Archdeacon Hardwick's Christ and other Masters.' If the learned author were now alive, he would probably handle his subject very differently. It is one of Laurence Oliphant's sharp sayings, that the only monopoly of which any religion can boast, is a monopoly of the errors peculiar to itself. Whether or not we adopt this dictum, certain it is that no religion that exists, or ever has existed, can claim to be in exclusive possession of religious truth. Cardinal Newman, in the first book he ever wrote, expressed this verity in emphatic language: Revelation, properly speaking, is an universal, not a partial gift. It would seem that there is something true, and divinely revealed, in every religion, all over the earth; overloaded as it may be, and, at times, even stifled, by the impieties which the corrupt will and understanding of men have incorporated with it.' True it is, as Max Müller observes, in words which end the preface to his great undertaking, and which may well serve to end this most inadequate notice of it-true it is that

' in these sacred books there is much which we should tolerate no longer, though we must not forget that there are portions in our own sacred books too which many of us would wish to be absent. . . . [But] there is no lesson which at the present time seems more important than to learn that we must draw in every religion a broad distinction between what is essential and what is not, between the eternal and the temporary, between the divine and the human; and that though the non-essential may fill many volumes, the essential can often be comprehended in a few words, but words on which "hang all the law and the prophets."

His 'History of the Arians.' Writing in 1882 (the letter will be found in Lilly's Essays and Speeches,' p. 94), he says, referring to this passage, 'I hold it as strongly as I did fifty years ago, when it was written.'

Art. II.-THE NOVELS OF GIOVANNI VERGA.

1. Vita dei Campi. Milan, 1880.

2. I Malavoglia. Milan, 1881.

3. Novelle Rusticane. Milan, 1883. 4. Mastro-Don Gesualdo.

And other works.

Milan, 1890.

IN contemporary Italian fiction there are three leading masters, who differ widely as to the principles and aims of their art. If two of these may be said to represent Moral Idealism and a certain perverse Individualism, Giovanni Verga counts as the Realist. He has been influenced, as we might expect, by the methods and examples of that French school which now would seem to be on the wane; but his realism is of a distinct quality, and worthy at once to provoke admiration and question. Now the dispute between realism and idealism is wellWe know, or seem to know, that it is a forced and confused dispute; that reconciliation is not only necessary, but possible. Does not every new school or departure in art claim to have freed itself from convention, and to have returned to nature and truth? Or, if we choose to deal in abstractions, has not the ideal its reality, and the real its ideal? What is the real but the ideal in the making; or the ideal if it be not the goal and consummation of the real? But the dispute is constantly recurring, and precisely because it is definite men and their works, and not abstractions, that engage and arrest attention. Commonly, this man or that work is seen more or less plainly to incline towards the one or the other extreme of art. In the case of Verga, we have to reckon with a man who has produced works that conspicuously bear the impress of realism, and works that, at least upon accepted foreign principles, must be classed as idealistic.

We may first inquire into Verga's realism, as being the more notable expression of himself. And, on behalf of realism, it can at once be admitted that there is no resource or security in art except in truthful reproduction. Truthful reproduction, and not exact imitation, be it noted; for it is as impossible to copy as to create.

What