governments, what centuries of experience had proved essential to their own. Between the "sentimental legislation" of Charles Sumner and the "practical statesmanship" of those who differed with him, the present condition of reconstruction affords us an opportunity to judge.

To this fatal defect in the scheme of reconstruction, Sumner refers again and again in his speeches, down to the time when the last rebel State resumed its place.

The claim of Charles Sumner to be held as one of the most conspicuous examples which history affords of the highest and most practical statesmanship, may be briefly stated in the words of the greatest orator of antiquity, and the greatest political philosopher of modern times-words which Sir James Mackintosh, at the close of his noble discourse, declares "state the substance, the object, and the result of all morality, and politics, and law:"

"Nihil est quod adhuc de republica putem dietum, et quo possim longius progredi, nisi sit confirmatum, non modo falsum esse illud, sine injuria non posse, sed hoc verissimum, sine summa justitia rem publicam geri nullo modo posse."

"Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society, and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all."

Surely that is the greatest and most practical statesmanship whose power is most enduring. This is a figure which will grow with added years. When the men, not yet grown old, are gone, who shared the studies, the hopes, the joys, of that youth of richest promise; when no man lives who remembers the form of manly beauty and manly strength, and the tones of the mellow and far-sounding voice which arraigned the giant crime of all ages, or set forth for the imitation of the youth of the university, in exquisite eulogy, the four ideals which he kept ever before his own gaze; when no survivor is left of the fifteen years of strife, and labor, and anxiety, and danger, and victory, which began with the passage of the Fugitive-Slave Law and ended with the surrender at Appomattox and the adoption of the thirteenth amendment; when the feet are dust that were wont to cross the

threshold of that hospitable home, rich with its treasures of art and literature; when the eloquent voices of eulogy from orator, and poet, and pulpit, are a tradition and not a memory—the character and career of Charles Sumner will still be efficient forces in history, and will have a still higher place than now in the gratitude of mankind.

GEORGE F. HOAR.

II.

A CRUMB FOR THE "MODERN SYMPOSIUM."

No one to whom the question of man's destiny is a matter of grave speculative concern can have read, without serious and solemn interest, the discussion lately called forth in England by Mr. Frederic Harrison's essay on "The Soul and Future Life." * In no way, perhaps, could the darkness of incomprehensibility which enshrouds the problem be more thoroughly demonstrated than by the candid presentation of so many diverse views by ten writers of very different degrees of philosophic profundity, but all of them able and fair-minded, and all of them actuated—each in his own way-by a spirit of religious faith. This last clause will no doubt seem startling, if not paradoxical, to many who have not yet come to realize how true it is that there is often more real faith in honest skepticism than in languid or timorous assent to a half-understood creed. But no paradox is intended. I believe that there is as much of the true essence of religionthe spirit of trust in God that has ever borne men triumphantly through the perplexities and woes of the world, and the possession of which, in some degree, by most of its members, is the chief defferential attribute of the human race-I believe that there is as much of this spirit exhibited in the remarks of Prof. Huxley as in those of Lord Blachford. In the serenity of mood with which the great scientific skeptic awaits the end, whatever it may prove to be, in the unflinching integrity with which his

The articles are all reproduced in The Popular Science Monthly Supplement, Nos. 1, 2, 6, and 7.

intellect refuses to entertain theories that do not seem properly accredited, in the glorious energy with which, accepting the world as it is, he performs with all his might and main the good work for which he is by nature fitted-in all this I can see the evidence of a trust in God no less real than that which makes it possible for his noble Christian friend to "believe because he is told." I am sure that I understand Prof. Huxley's attitude; I think I understand Lord Blachford's, also; and it seems to me that the difference between the two attitudes, wide as it is, is still a purely intellectual difference. It has its root in differently blended capacities of judgment and insight, and in no wise fundamentally affects the religious character. It will be well for the world when this lesson has been thoroughly learned, so as to leave no further room for misapprehension. That great progress has already been made in learning it, we need no other proof than the mere existence of this "Modern Symposium" on the subject of a future life. Three centuries ago it would have been in strict accordance with propriety for the ten disputants to have adjourned their symposium to some ecclesiastical court, preparatory to a final settlement at Smithfield. One century ago there would have been wholesale vituperation, attended with more or less imputation of unworthy motives, and very likely there would have been some Jesuitical paltering with truth. To-day, however, the tremendous question is discussed on all sides-alike by Protestant and Catholic, by transcendentalist, skeptic, and positivist—with evident candor and praiseworthy courtesy; for, in spite of Prof. Huxley's keen-edged wit and Mr. Harrison's fervent heat, there is no one so fortunate as to know these gentlemen who does not know that manly tenderness and good feeling are by no means incompatible with the ability to exchange good hard blows in a fair English fight.

It is with some diffidence that I venture to add my voice to a conversation carried on by such accomplished speakers, but the present seems to be a proper occasion for calling attention to some of the misconceptions which ordinarily cluster around the treatment of questions relating to the soul and a future life. In thus entering upon the discussion, I do not feel called upon to defend any particular solution of the main question at issue. Going by the "light of Nature" alone-to use the old-fashioned

phrase-it will be generally conceded that the problem of a future life is so abstruse and complicated that one is quite excusable for refraining from a dogmatic treatment of it. Nay, one is not only excusable, one is morally bound not to dogmatize unless one has a firmer basis to stand on than any of us are likely to find for some time to come. We may entertain hypotheses in private, but we are hardly entitled to urge them until we feel assured, in the first place, that we have duly fathomed the conditions requisite for a rational treatment of the problem. It would appear that some of the participators in the "Modern Symposium" have not sufficiently heeded this obvious maxim of philosophic caution. Loose talk about "materialism" is apt to imply loose thinking as to the manner in which the metaphysical relations of body and soul are to be apprehended. Perhaps Mr. Harrison, as a positivist, will say that he has nothing to do with apprehending the metaphysical relations between body and soul; but, however that may be, there is some laxity of thought exhibited in charging Prof. Huxley with "materialism" because he speaks of "building up a physical theory of moral phenomena." At the same time, I think we must admit that Prof. Huxley is talking somewhat loosely when he uses such an expression. To try to explain conscience, with metaphysical strictness, as a result of the grouping of material molecules, is something which I am sure Prof. Huxley would never think of doing; but, unless I am entirely mistaken on this point, there is no ground for Mr. Harrison's charge of materialism.

To see Prof. Huxley charged with materialism, and in a reproachful tone withal, by a positivist who does not acknowledge the existence of a soul, save in some extremely Pickwickian sense, is a strange, not to say comical, spectacle. "What next?" one is inclined to ask. Positivists are apt to have, indeed, an ecclesiastical style of expression, and one would almost think, from his manner, that Mr. Harrison was making common cause with theologians. Into the explanation of this curious phenomenon I cannot here profitably enter. The reasons for it are somewhat recondite, and are subtilely linked with the general incapacity under which positivists seem to labor, of understanding the real import of the doctrine of evolution. However this may be, the impression that the group of opinions represented by Mr. Spencer and