of phenomena which maneuver in the world about us, without gaining any idea of power. It is only as we put forth effort, as we are conscious of being ourselves causes, that a belief in external causation arises. Deny that we are causes of our actions, and even a dream of external causation becomes impossible. Yet Mr. Spencer, in the passage we have quoted concerning the soul's freedom, denies in the most explicit terms that it has any causal power whatever. Not to mention the violence this does to our consciousness, let us note one result: if there is no causation within, there is not the slightest warrant for believing in it without. Yet Mr. Spencer, after obtaining the belief in external causation from the fact of internal causation, then proceeds to deny the fact on which the belief rests, and asks us still to accept the belief. It is hard to resist such an appeal, for if the belief is not accepted, Mr. Spencer's system would have no power to work with; and if the internal fact is not denied, his system breaks down. And this is science; this is evolution. Whoever does not accept it is convicted of an "overwhelming bias in favor of a preconceived theory." It is hard to believe that Mr. Spencer is really serious. Is it not possible that this work is meant only as an elaborate satire upon the loose reasoning and baseless assumptions of much that calls itself science? We think the internal evidence of this theory complete, while the opposing view, that the book was meant as a sober exposition of fact, seems beset with insurmountable difficulties-it is positively incredible.

Sensational philosophy has never been able to escape idealism. In its zeal to deny the existence of a knowing power which takes direct cognizance of external existence, it has been forced to build up the external world as well as the mind from the raw material of sensation. There is sensation, according to this doctrine, long before there is knowledge; and the final recognition of self and of an external world is the residuum of countless sensations. But if this be so, then the deposit which is named self has just as good warrant as the deposit which represents the outer world. It is impossible to reject one and accept the other. In the attempt to do this, materialism has always tumbled into a bottomless gulf of idealism. Mr. Mill makes matter an affection of mind and mind a product of matter.

ness.

* *

Mr. Bain reduces mind to nerve-currents, and then says that nerve-currents and the outer world generally have only a hypothetical existence-indeed they are but abstract names for our sensations, and have no existence save in the mind that framed them. (Senses and Intellect, p. 376.) Mr. Spencer follows in their footsteps. "By reality we mean persistence in consciousThe real, as we conceive it, is distinguished solely by the test of persistence; for by this test we separate it from what we call the unreal." (F. P., p. 226.) "Existence means nothing more than persistence." (Vol. i, p. 146.) Add to this the statement that the reality of external things is entirely unknown, and that all we think we see in them, is but a shadow of the mind's own throwing; and we have the blankest idealism possible. If a madman's vagaries should persist, they would be as real as the objects of our normal perception. Let any fancy whatever persist long enough, and it must be looked upon as an independent existence. Mr. Spencer does indeed repudiate idealism with great vehemence and calls it insane. When he is pressed by the idealist or sceptic he calls the "Universal Postulate" to his relief. This is, that we cannot help believing in an outer world. But the reply is close at hand. Mr. Spencer teaches that this inability is the result of habit. Besides, his theory of the unknowable stands in the way of such an appeal; we are as sure that we know things as they are, as that we know that they exist. If we could get clear of one belief, we could get clear of the other. There is no help for it; Mr. Spencer's solid-looking, sensational ground tumbles from under his feet, and leaves him in the abysses.

Now what shall we say of this theory? Has it not failed at every point which we indicated in opening the discussion? Even permitting it to ransack imagination for its arguments and facts, it utterly breaks down. Faith like a grain of mustard seed might, possibly, enable one to receive it, but nothing less would. And the purpose of all this subtle misconstruction of our experience, of this labored denial of what we know, of these fanciful guesses at the unknown, is only to escape admitting that, back of nerves and muscles, there is a knowing, selfactive mind.

Of Mr. Spencer's theory in general we must say that we utterly dissent from the common verdict upon it. The system has, to be sure, a certain element of grandeur; but that is entirely due to the factors with which it deals. Any doctrine which deals with solar systems, and with forces and times and spaces which are infinite, necessarily has an air of vastness about it which proves attractive. Mr. Spencer has painted a big picture with a big brush; and the popular imagination, which finds it easier to wonder than to understand, will have it that he must be a great painter. Upon a sober survey it can hardly be claimed that he has added much to our stock of knowledge. The elder Mill has expounded the associational doctrine with greater lucidity and better logic. Bain has given a better account of cerebral psychology. Mr. Spencer's attempt at universe-building it would be a kindness to pass over in silence. Bad as the old book of Genesis is said to be, it is certainly better than the new. The sum of Mr. Spencer's labors is a huge, contradictory system which kills itself and don't know it. The doctrine began in a fog and never succeeded in getting out of it. There was never a more ambitious attempt, and never a more dismal failure.

Science has fallen upon evil days. Every department is flooded with assertions which can never be put to a test, and on the strength of propositions which are not amenable to proof or intuition, the most extravagant theories are built up. In many quarters, especially in biology and physiology, science seems to have degenerated altogether from the severe adherence to fact which has won for it its present distinction. Contradiction and absurdity go for nothing, so long as the doctrine falls in with prevailing tendencies. But that such a work as the one in hand should be accepted by so many as being at once the profoundest philosophy and the most assured science, is most discouraging. It is extremely fashionable, just now, to decry metaphysics as a useless study, but a very small amount of logical culture and metaphysical knowledge, would serve to render such systems as this impossible. We have not much hope of a speedy revival of metaphysical study, but we must express a wish that before long something more may be neces sary to secure unquestioning acceptance of intellectual buffoonery than merely to call it science.

ARTICLE V.-POPULAR SONGS AMONG THE DRAVIDIAN NATIONS.

The Folk-Songs of Southern India. By CHARLES E. GOVER. pp. xxviii, 296. London: Trübner & Co. Madras: Higginbotham & Co. 1872.

MR. GOVER has given to the public one of the most interesting and instructive books relating to a little worked field of Indian literature, which we have lately read. In this book we gain almost for the first time an insight into the every-day life and thoughts of that portion of the people of India, which has been least studied and most imperfectly understood. Since the British occupation of the country opened an unexpected chapter in the antiquities of the race, the efforts of scholars have naturally been expended chiefly upon the Vedas and the classical Sanskrit literature, which, however, represents but a single caste, the Brahmans. In this way the great majority of the people, the common people, are liable to be misunderstood. The philosophical speculations of the learned class are almost unknown to the masses; the monstrous tales respecting the gods, inventions of a crafty priesthood, may serve to amuse them at their public festivals, but probably have little influence upon their daily lives. Especially is this remark true of the hill tribes of Southern India, who have not so completely succumbed to the Brahmanic caste as the people of the plains. There is certainly no better way to discover the character of these people than to collect the songs, which pass from mouth to mouth in their every-day life.

There is ample evidence that when the dominant Hindu race entered India, they found the country already possessed by a darker-skinned people, whom they gradually subdued or drove into the inaccessible mountain fastnesses of Central and Southern India.

What the family connections of these early settlers were we are perhaps not in a condition to say with certainty. Dr. Caldwell, who some years since published a "Comparative Gram

against the wind is segregated; the wheat gets with the wheat and the chaff with the chaff. The first two illustrations are adduced by Mr. Spencer himself, and the third is as good as any he offers. Now, because dead leaves are blown away and sand is washed out of gravel, therefore, the nerve-vesicles answering to like ideas get together and pull one another back and forth through consciousness. It seems incredible that Mr. Spencer should have deluded himself with such vague and unmeaning analogies as these. That he has deluded others is to us the highest possible proof of his statement that most men do not think, but only think that they think." Surely it is a sublime and touching faith in the great doctrine of evolution which enables one to accept these puerilities as science; indeed, it would be impossible to find a better specimen of the faith which is said to remove mountains.

But Mr. Spencer attempts another explanation of association: "As the plexuses in these highest nervous centers, by exciting in distinct ways special sets of plexuses in the inferior centers, call up special sets of ideal feelings and relations; so by simultaneously exciting in diffused ways the general sets of plexuses to which these special sets belong, they call up in vague the accompanying general sets of ideal feelings and relations—the emotional background appropriate to the definite conception. In the language of our illustration, we may say that the superior nervous centers, in playing upon the inferior ones, bring out not only specific chords and cadences of feelings, but, in so doing, arouse reverberating echoes of all kin dred chords and cadences that have been struck during an immeasurable past-producing a great volume of indefinite tones harmonizing with the definite tones." (Vol. i, p. 571.)

This statement, which recalls the doctrine of Aristoxenus, that mind is the tune of the organism, is the completion of the statement on p. 125 that emotions are only remembered sensa tions, and are aroused by wandering nerve-currents which, in racing up and down the system, lit upon the vesicles which belong to the old sensations. It is sufficient to say, first, that there is no proof possible in the nature of the case; and, second, that this view does not explain why the "specific chords and cadences of feelings" should only "arouse reverberating