gesture of an opposite kind. If hostility, for example, is manifested in a series of well-defined actions of an aggressive kind, friendliness will be expressed in a series of gestures exactly the reverse, and so of all the other movements coming under the same head. The gestures of desire will be the opposite of those expressing aversion, and those of joy the antithesis of sorrow. But it is clear from the nature of the case, as well as from the requirements of the theory, that both series must from the first exist, and be manifested together, as they are necessarily dependent on each other. The just inference, surely, therefore would be that they must be due to common causes, and exemplify the working of a common principle. If the one set of movements are spontaneous and instinctive, so also must be the other. The only way of escaping this conclusion, and saving Mr. Darwin's first principle, is by supposing that for countless generations animal life must have been vitally divided, cut in twain like the child of Solomon's Judgment, and the one half developed in a lop-sided manner irrespective of the other. It must be assumed that the one side or aspect of emotions and desires, which in actual life are the relief, balance, and counterpart of each other, existed in an isolated form; that the expressive movements belonging to them were from generation to generation slowly matured without any admixture of opposite gestures and expressions; that when they were all matured, a strong reaction set in, love coming to balance hate, joy to mitigate sorrow, desire to counteract aversion, and that the reaction developed a whole series of strongly antithetical cxpressive movements. It need hardly be said that this supposition is an absurdity. Still, if it is to work at all, Mr. Darwin's theory requires some such assumption. This well illustrates the suicidal confusion which results from attempting to explain a product without taking fully into account one of the factors, and that the most important, essential to its production. Human gestures and expression, as the reflex of human intelligence and emotion, cannot of course be explained apart from the rational faculties which are their ground and cause. But in attempting the explanation Mr. Darwin deals only with animal elements, and thinks only of animal necessities. He justly assumes that expression having no direct physical use, is not absolutely necessary to animal life; and as he must identify rational and animal life, he naturally makes the same supposition with regard to man. Here, however, he at once travels beyond the record, and leaps to a conclusion not supported by the premises, and at variance with the facts. To a rational self-conscious being, like man, endowed with progressive intelligence, ample means of expression are not only useful, but a vital necessity of the first order. The development of his powers depends on society, on intercourse with his fellow-men, and for this purpose he absolutely requires prompt and effective means of communicating both his thoughts and feelings. These wants are supplied by expressive gesture and articulate speech; and though man has never been found without the developed use of both, yet of the two, gesture, especially in earlier and ruder states of society, is the more important. It is a universal language which overrides all local dialects, and is everywhere intelligible. The testimony of explorers visiting unknown tribes and coming into contact with the rudest and most barbarous races, is on this point explicit and unanimous. Gesture-language enables men to communicate with each other in every corner of the globe, and is universally intelligible alike to the savage and the civilised. The language of expression is, moreover, in relation to the emotions and desires, a more distinctive and effective vehicle of communication than articulate speech. In this respect it reflects the superior force and directness of feeling as compared with thought. As the combination of letters and words in language expresses thought, so the rapid combination of living curves and lines, of varying lights and shadows, and quickly changing hues in the human countenance express fecling. It is, moreover, not only the more rapid and direct, but the truest and most authentic index of emotion-more delicate, diversified, and instantaneous than any other. In a larger view of use and service expression is thus to a rational being a prime necessity of existence, the very breath of social and progressive life. To meet these primary rational wants and desires is to an intelligent being quite as much an impulse and necessity of nature as the satisfaction of bodily wants is to a mere animal. Had Mr. Darwin taken a wider and truer view of use and service he would have perceived this, but his attention is so restricted to animal elements that he thinks only of animal uses. In other words, he has not included amongst his fundamental principles the human intelligence and emotion, without which it is for ever impossible to explain human expression. This is the fatal defect that vitiates so much of his ingenious speculation and laborious industry. Assuming only animal elements, Mr. Darwin employs them as a kind of common substance, a physiological gutta percha, which he is always trying to stretch and twist, to mould and manipulate, into the semblance of humanity. It is a vain and even preposterous effort. The confused and contradictory results it produces sufficiently show that if you do not start with rationality or conscious intelligence in attempting to explain the higher powers and capacities, the distinctive acquisitions and activities of man, the attempt will inevitably fail. Mr. Darwin's recent works are conspicuous monuments of this failure. In trying to extract reason and conscience out of animal elements he is, indeed, little better than a physiological alchemist, and his labours, in their higher scope, are just as barren as those of his chemical predecessors, traditionally connected with the darkest ages and the blackest arts. It is, indeed, a spectacle worthy of an elder day to see the venerable evolutionist bending over his slow metaphysical fire, mingling animal ingredients in the favourite crucibles of natural selection and sexual variation, and announcing with an air of absolute confidence and triumph the anticipated result. He evidently thinks that he has at length secured the drop profound,' the protoplasmic globule, which, under skilful distillation, may be evolved, not only into the panorama of animated nature, but into the long phantasmagorial procession of the different races and generations of men. But like the drop profound caught by the witches in its fall from the corner of the moon, and distilled with unholy rites in their seething cauldron, it simply leads on the eager inquirer into the mysteries of nature to his own confusion. The pursuit is a hopeless one, and the confidence in its results mere illusion. The higher secrets of nature are not so readily discovered or so easily exhausted. The elixir rationis is not thus to be obtained. But though the labour, in its higher aspects, is like that of the alchemist vain, it contributes indirectly to the advancement of science. Although the alchemists did not discover the secret of life or the philosopher's stone, their labours gave a useful impulse to chemical research. And though Mr. Darwin's efforts to extract reason and conscience from physical elements are vain, his writings have undoubtedly given a stimulus to the higher branches of physiological inquiry. And if, like the labours of the alchemists of old, they have done some incidental mischief in fostering vain expectations and prompting useless efforts, the example of such single-minded devotion to the speculative side of science is undoubtedly a noble one, and apart from the value of its results is justly entitled to admiration and respect. ART. VIII.-1. Zur Geschichte der Römisch-Deutschen Frage. Von Dr. OTTO MEJER. 2 vols. Rostock: 1872. 2. Die Grenzen zwischen Staat und Kirche. Historisch-dogmatische Studie. Von Dr. EMIL FRIEDBERG. Tübingen: 1872. 3. Das Veto der Regierungen bei Bischofswahlen. Von Dr. EMIL FRIEDBERG. Halle: 1869. 4. Geschichte der Katholischen Kirche Deutschlands von der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts bis in die Gegenwart. Von Dr. H. SCHMID. 1 Hälfte. München: 1872. 5. Verhandlungen des zweiten Alt-Katholiken Congresses zu Köln. 1872. I T was on the very day in July 1870, and almost at the same hour, when the King of Prussia uttered that memorable appeal which made the whole Fatherland flock to his standard with a unanimity which eventually resulted in the acclamation of an Empire, that Pius IX. gave vent in St. Peter's to the exultation of his seemingly absolute triumph over a few disregarded remonstrants, by solemn promulgation of his infallibility as a divine truth incumbent on all who would be saved to believe; and again, by a coincidence equally unpremeditated and no less striking, it happened that the ecstatic glorification of a mystical grace assumed to have been vouchsafed from on High to Pius IX., in the visible sign of a prolongation of reign beyond what had fallen to the lot of any Pontiff since the legendary days of St. Peter, was celebrated at Rome with the gorgeous pomp of sacerdotal pageantry, at the same instant of time when the weather-beaten soldiers of Germany were marching back into the capital with the hale old soldier at their head-a King when he went forth, the acclaimed German Emperor of a German Empire as he then rode in, the visible symbol of what the work they had achieved really implied. Thus at the very moment when the Imperial authority was created anew, out of one block without the flaw of any foreign vein, the old contest between Rome and Germany was rekindled at the very point at which it had died away more than two centuries ago. At the sight of the conflict declaring itself once more between Germany and the Court of Rome, the question cannot but at once occur, whether the challenge thrown down to Rome proceeds from merely individual caprice-from the ambition of one daring and self-willed statesman, dexterous and powerful enough to initiate a vigorous movement-or whether it proceeds from the concurrent impulse of that statesman's vigour co-operating with a native vein of sentiment, to be traced historically through generations. Should it appear that the movement now a-foot in Germany--by which we mean the attitude of the State, and not the theological considerations constituting the specific subject of the Old-Catholic controversy is mainly due to a personal influence, we should be driven to the conclusion that it would share the fate of the ephemeral efforts of Joseph II. During that emperor's lifetime the privileges of the Roman system might well have seemed thoroughly shaken in his dominions, and yet the breath had scarcely left his body when matters rapidly gravitated back into the old lines, because the Emperor's arm was the one prop of the particular structure of anti-ecclesiastical policy he had been striving with hot haste to rear. If the thirteen million Germans professing the Roman Catholic faith should present one unbroken opposition to a policy, which, while avoiding to strike the spiritual essences of doctrine, should aim at loosening the stringency of the hierarchical bonds by which all local independence of religious life has become fettered into helpless dependence on an autocratic and irresponsible authority in Rome, then we must abandon expectations of any organic movement towards permanent emancipation. It is to this question-which must instantly force itself before every other on whoever is at all curious about the ultimate result of the pending controversy-that the following pages will be devoted. It would, indeed, be singularly presumptuous to profess, within the compass of an article, to gauge all the elements which in Germany might contribute to the force of a movement for reform in the Roman Church, through a joint action from within the pale of Catholicism and from the State. The titles of some recent German publications on the subject which appear at the head of this article afford abundant evidence of how vast a field has to be travelled over by those who would master so complicated a problem. On the other hand, these writings facilitate a survey of leading circumstances. With the help of these guides, we shall accordingly cursorily review some significant facts in the course of German history-ecclesiastical and secular-which may help the reader to form an opinion whether there be reasonable ground for assuming the existence of any latent element within the pale of German Catholic communities likely to abet vigorous State action directed against those particular assumptions of despotic power |