such controlling influence over our statesmen. And it is also to be remarked that as to the internal liquor traffic, while the Federal Government derives a large revenue from its taxation (in 1876 over sixty-five millions of dollars), yet under the theory and practice of our government the regulation of that traffic, even to its entire prohibition, is reserved to the several States. It is not unlikely that the contemplation of the enormous sums received since the war from this national taxation has awakened the States to the capacity for revenue which the traffic affords. And if the magnitude of a national tax impresses the imagination more, on the other hand, when it is distributed and brought home to the people as a source of State, or perchance of local revenue, it affects more apparently the individual interest of the citizen.

Men are not always willing to avow the baser motives which control their policy; nay, they are not always conscious of them. But occasionally some one whose frankness is greater, or his sense of shame less than that of ordinary men, is ready to avow the latent feelings of his fellows. Thus, in the late Constitutional Convention of Ohio, we find Mr. Bishop, of Cincinnati, boldly saying that while he considers "the misery it (the liquor traffic) entails on the one hand, and the part it plays in national finances on the other," he is "not ready to vote to sacrifice and destroy all the wealth and influence which are at this time invested in this branch of commerce ;" and he adds that the traffic is "two or three times as great in amount as the pork trade in Cincinnati."

We should underrate the quality of the hearts and heads of the readers of this Review were we to suppose that they would deliberately weigh the "wealth invested" in the liquor traffic against "the misery it entails." They are absolutely incommensurable; for the one is material, the other spiritual; the one is temporal, the other eternal. But if we eliminate what is saddest of the misery, and leave only the residuum of pecuniary loss, it fearfully overshadows all possible revenue to the state or nation. For such a revenue is based upon a vastly greater aggregate of wasteful consumption, and of consumption which not only entails upon the public the support of pauperism and the punishment of crime and the cost of sickness and acci

dents, but strikes at the very source of national wealth by dimin ishing productive industry and impairing the power of production itself. A traffic that makes bad citizens and poor laborers can offer no financial compensations to the state worth a wise man's consideration.

We are compelled, then, to the conclusion, that the taxation of the liquor traffic offers no effective regulation of it; that if held out as a measure of reform it is delusive, and stands in the way of better legislation; and that in itself it has the double vice of being opposed to the better moral instincts, and of being operative as a bribe to pervert the public conscience.

ROBERT C. PITMAN.

SCIENCE AND A FUTURE STATE.

BROADLY speaking, there are two ways of looking at

Their

things. We may measure that which is without by a standard from within, or that which is within by a standard from without. The old schoolmen adopted the first method when they insisted upon the perfect circularity of the planetary motions and the immaculate perfection of the sun. failure has already become a story of the past. But at the present moment an opposite school of thought have gained ascendency, and these insist upon regarding man as altogether the product of the visible world around him.

Their procrustean method of measurement has been applied so rigidly, and sometimes so unfeelingly, as to provoke a violent opposition from the inmost depths of our nature. And yet there is an amount of reasonableness in both these ways of setting to work.

The truth would seem to be that if we had on the one hand a complete knowledge of our own natures, we could rise to a comprehensive grasp of the cosmos; or if we had, on the other, a complete view of the cosmos, we could by this means obtain a thorough knowledge of ourselves. But in either case we must always start from something within ourselves. The justifiable satisfaction which we now feel when we contemplate all that science has already achieved arises from the conviction that there is a profound correspondence between our scientific instincts and the course of outward things, so profound and so intimate that our intellectual nature is never put to permanent confusion. Thus the true man of science, whilst he regards the past with satisfaction, contemplates the future with unbounded

hope he sees before him an interminable vista, along which he delights to travel; "forgetting the things which are behind, he is continually pressing forward to those which are before."

Now let us ask ourselves why it was that the old schoolmen made such a profound mistake. We think that the blame for their failure has been attributed in too large a proportion to the Church of those days, and in too small a proportion to the mental peculiarities of the middle ages, which were pervaded with the spirit of literature rather than with that of scientific thought. The intellectual weapon employed was not altogether intellectual. The prevalent school of thought, actuated rather by moral and religious than by strictly intellectual views, had forged something which was not a weapon. It was of no use in the investigation of nature, when nature came to be investigated. Nevertheless the schoolmen did not give way without a struggle, they denied the reality of the perplexity introduced when their scheme was tested by observation. They continued for some time to assert the truth of their views, and to question the accuracy of the observations which appeared to contradict them—at length, however, they were compelled to yield. Let us now review in a similar manner the procedure of the extreme school of the present day. A victory for science has undoubtedly been gained; we can now look at things from a comprehensive stand-point, and are able to realize the underlying unity of the cosmos. But man himself forms part of this wonderful order, and therefore it is deemed possible to explain scientifically, and, as it were, from without, the origin of man's moral and spiritual nature. The attempt is made; but the explanation does not prove satisfactory to a large body of men, who continue to assert that the adoption of the proposed scheme would lead to permanent perplexity in the moral and spiritual world. Now there are two ways of criticising such a scheme.

Inasmuch as it takes its rise upon the basis of scientific speculation we may criticise it intellectually, and see whether it be thoroughly consistent with itself, or whether some vital point may not in reality have been overlooked.

Or we may attempt to show that if introduced it would inevitably lead to permanent moral confusion, and if we succeed

in this we shall in reality have sufficiently condemned it; for just as the intellect is bound to reject any scheme that would permanently perplex it, so is the moral and spiritual nature of man bound to reject any that will inevitably lead to moral and spiritual confusion. To speak plainly, we may attack the materialistic scheme in two ways: we may either challenge the validity of its leading scientific argument, directed mainly against the possibility of a future state of existence, or we may attempt to prove that the denial of such a state will produce irretrievable moral perplexity. The first of these will be the course adopted by the man of science, the second will commend itself to the moral philosopher. Desiring here to confine ourselves to the first of these two methods, we cannot, however, refrain from making one remark. Confusion is not an element that any body of thinkers are willing to encounter, and the extreme school, who have been the aggressors on this occasion, are naturally anxious to prove (just as the old schoolmen attempted to do) that the disturbance is, after all, only apparent, and that a nobler and higher system of moral and social order will ultimately be established on a sound philosophical basis. They decline to receive the outcry of the followers of religion as a true evidence of confusion. Nevertheless, the disturbance caused is real enough and honest enough, for we have the curious fact of the rise of a school of pessimists amongst the scientific ranks themselves; that is to say, of men who are at once bold enough to carry out their principles, and candid enough to admit that as a logical consequence intelligent existence is a mistake.

Let us now endeavor to ascertain the true verdict of science on the question raised by this extreme school of thought. We see many groups of things in the world around us. There are things in motion and things at rest, things colored and things without color, things sounding and things silent, things hard and things soft, things living and things dead. Now, without doubt, this last group will impress us most profoundly, for in things living we recognize a likeness to ourselves, while from the fate of things dead we perhaps think we may predict our And from a surface view the tale here told by nature is certainly not a pleasing one. For there seems to be a general

own.